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Anti-Slavery  Leaders 

OF 

North  Carolina 


Series  XVI         ■  No.  6 

JOHNS  HOPKINS  UNIVERSITY  STUDIES 

IN 

Historical   and    Political   Science 

HERBERT  B.  ADAMS,  Editor. 


History  is  past  Politics  and  Politics  are  present  History. — Freeman. 


Anti-Slavery   Leaders 

OF 

North  Carolina 


BY 


JOHN  SPENCER  BASSETT,  Ph.D.,  J.  H.  U. 

Professor  of  History  in    Trinity  College,  North  Carolina 


THE  JOHNS  HOPKINS  PRESS,  BALTIMORE 

Published  Monthly 

JUNE,  1898. 


f33I 


PREFACE. 

When,  about  three  years  ago,  I  began  to  make  a  study 
of  slavery  in  North  Carolina  I  found  that  there  were  some 
men  like  Mr.  Helper,  Prof.  Hedrick,  and  Mr.  Goodloe, 
whose  participation  in  the  anti-slavery  cause  demanded  a 
more  extended  notice  than  it  was  possible  to  give  in  a  gen- 
eral treatment  of  the  subject.  Consequently,  I  have  pre- 
pared the  present  sketches.  I  offer  them  to  the  public 
because  it  does  not  seem  good  that  the  personalities  of 
North  Carolina's  contributors  to  the  anti-slavery  cause 
should  be  forgotten. 

For  assistance  in  this  work  my  thanks  are  due  to  Mr. 
Helper,  Mr.  Goodloe,  Mr.  Charles  J.  Hedrick,  of  George- 
town, D.  C,  and  Dr.  Dred  Peacock,  of  Greensboro,  N.  C. 

J.  S.  B. 
April  15,  1898. 


CONTENTS. 

The  Home  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Sentiment 7 

Hinton  Rowan  Helper 11 

Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick 29 

Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe .  47 

Eli  Washington  Caruthers 56 

Lunsford  Lane 60 


Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina. 


The  Home  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Sentiment. 

No  section  of  the  old  South  contained  so  much  anti- 
slavery  sentiment  as  did  the  western  parts  of  Virginia, 
North  Carolina  and  South  Carolina,  the  northern  part 
of  Georgia  and  the  eastern  parts  of  Kentucky  and  Ten- 
nessee. This  was  due  to  causes  entirely  natural.  The 
South  Atlantic  coast  region  is  divided  into  two  distinct 
kinds  of  country.  Next  to  the  ocean  there  is  a  strip  of 
land,  varying  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  miles  in  width, 
which  is  a  fertile  and  well  watered  plain.  West  of  this,  and 
stretching  to  the  mountains,  is  a  hilly  region,  whose  clay 
soil,  though  fertile  in  spots,  is  not  naturally  as  productive 
as  that  lying  on  the"  river  banks  to  the  east.  The  eastern 
division  was  first  settled.  It  fell  almost  from  the  first  into 
the  hands  of  wealthy  planters,  and  soon  held  many  slaves. 
The  western  portion,  as  well  as  the  lands  beyond  the  mount- 
ains, was  occupied  by  settlers  during  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. These  came  chiefly  from  Pennsylvania,  Maryland, 
New  Jersey  and  New  England.  Many  of  them  were  Scotch- 
Irish,  and  not  a  feW  were  Germans.  Many  were  persons 
who  had  arrived  in  America  a  few  years  before,  and  who 
were  still  poor.  Nearly  all  settled  oh  small  farms,  which 
they  expected  to  work  with  their  own" hands.  Being  remote 
from  water  communication,  they  were  a  long  way  from  mar- 
ket, and  consequently  industry  progressed  slowly.  They 
raised  most  of  the  articles  they  consumed,  and  what  they 
bought  they  got  by  carting  their  wheat  or  driving  their 
stock  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  miles  to  Richmond,  Va.,  to 
Fayetteville,  N.  C,  or  to  some  other  point  at  the  head  of 


8  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North   Carolina.         [268 

navigation  of  the  various  rivers  that  traversed  this  section. 
Under  such  conditions  the  upland  counties  remained  frugal, 
industrious,  simple  and  democratic.  Here  slavery  was  in-* 
troduced  very  slowly.  From  the  conditions  of  industry,  as 
well  as  from  the  habits  of  the  people,  slavery  had  at  first 
little  encouragement.  Had  not  the  eastern  and  southern 
edges  of  this  section  been  opened  to  the  cotton  industry, 
and  had  not  the  raising  of  slaves  for  the  far  South  become 
profitable,  slavery  very  probably  would  have  gained  no 
foothold  here. 

All  the  conditions  of  small  farms,  simple  habits  and  dem- 
ocratic ideals  which  have  been  ascribed  to  this  general 
region  were  emphatically  attributable  to  that  part  of  it  which 
lay  in  North  Carolina.  The  western  part  of  this  State,  until 
the  railroads  were  built,  about  the  middle  of  this  century, 
was  very  distinct  from  the  eastern  part.  A  line  drawn  from 
the  Roanoke  river  at  Halifax,  through  the  western  parts  of 
Edgecomb,  Greene  and  Lenoir  counties,  across  the  center 
of  Duplin  and  the  western  part  of  Pender,  thence  straight 
to  the  Cape  Fear  river,  then  continued  to  the  neighborhood 
of  Fayetteville,  then  across  the  western  end  of  Harnett,  the 
eastern  sides  of  Wake  and  Franklin,  and  thence  to  the  Roa- 
noke river ;  such  a  line  would  enclose  a  territory  which,  save 
for  as  much  of  the  valleys  of  the  Roanoke,  Tar,  Neuse  and 
Cape  Fear  as  lay  in  it,  was  a  level  plain,  covered  with  pine 
forest,  and  which  was  not  very  attractive  to  immigrants. 
This  region  was  thinly  settled,  and  until  it  was  cleft  by  the 
Wilmington  andWeldon  Railroad  it  was  not  well  developed. 
It  remained  a  "pine  barren,"  and  served  to  divide  the  east 
from  the  west.  The  counties  west  of  this,  except  those  along 
the  Cape  Fear  and  Roanoke  rivers,  contained  few  spots  in 
which  slavery  had  planted  itself  with  any  considerable  root- 
age. In  the  West  was,  also,  no  great  love  of  slavery.  If  a 
vigorous  appeal  could  have  been  made  against  slavery  in 
these  counties,  they  could  very  likely,  at  any  time 
before  i860,  have  been  carried  for  freedom.  It  is  notewor- 
thy that  all  the  anti-slavery  leaders  the  State  produced  came 
from  within,  or  near,  this  region. 


269]         The  Home  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Sentiment.  9 

Besides  the  economic  and  territorial  differences  between 
these  two  regions,  one  ought  to  mention  a  political  differ- 
ence.    The  counties  of  the  east  were  small  as  compared 
with  those  of  the  west.     The  State  Senate  was,  by  the  Con- 
stitution  of    1776,    composed   of   one   Senator   from   each 
county.     The  House  of  Commons  was  composed  of  two 
Representatives  from  each  county  and  one  from  each  of 
six  designated  towns.     In   1835   there  were  in   the  west 
twenty-six  counties,  while  there  were  thirty  that  might  be 
classed  as   eastern  in   spirit.     The   eastern   counties  were 
much  smaller  than  those  of  the  west.     This  gave  the  pre- 
dominance of  power  to  the  smaller  east.     The  importance 
of  this  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  selection  of  the  Governor 
and  other  executive  officers  of  the  State,  the  judges  and  the 
officers  of  the  militia,  was  left  to  the  Assembly.     The  west 
rebelled  against  this  arrangement,  and  won  its  rights  in  the 
Constitutional  Convention  of  1835.     It  was  then  provided 
that  Senators  should  be  elected  from  districts  formed  on  the 
basis  of  public  taxation,  and  that  the  members  of  the  House 
of  Commons  should  be  apportioned  among  the  counties  on 
the  basis  of  federal  population.     The  relief  for  the  west  is 
obvious.     Of  the  counties  that  now  had  four  Representa- 
tives, all  were  western,  and  of  those  that  had  three,  nine 
were  western  and  three  eastern;    while  of  those  that  had 
only  one,  twenty  were  in  the  east  and  five  in  the  west,  three 
of  the  latter  being  mountain  counties,  which  to  this  day  are 
very  thinly  settled.     At  the  same  convention  the  election  of 
Governor  was  given  to  the  people.     Still  the  gain  of  the 
west  was  not  all  that  it  desired.     It  saw  that  representation 
in  the  House  of  Commons  on  the  basis  of  federal  population 
bore  severely  on  it.     It  was  with  difficulty  that  the  party 
leaders  could  keep  this  question  out  of  the  struggle  for  the 
abolition  of  property  qualification  for  the  election  of  Senat- 
ors, which  was  fought  through  and  won,  in  1857,  after  a  con- 
test of  nine  years.  Had  not  the  issue  of  the  war  removed  this 
inequality,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  it  would  have  become  an 
issue  between  the  two   sections  before  many  years  had 


10  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [270 

passed.  Indeed,  if  we  consider  the  righteousness  of  anti- 
^avery  in  the  abstract,  and  the  superior  strength  of  the  vig- 
orous west,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that,  had  the  question 
been  left  to  be  determined  in  a  peaceful  struggle,  the  west 
would  finally  have  removed  the  stain  of  slavery  from  the 
State. 

One  other  factor  of  the  struggle  in  the  west  ought  to  be 
mentioned.  I  refer  to  the  Quakers.  There  were  in  Guil- 
ford, Randolph  and  adjoining  counties  a  large  number  of 
this  sect.1  These  were  as  ardent  in  the  cause  of  abolition 
here,  in  the  face  of  slaveholders,  as  their  brethren  had  been 
in  Pennsylvania.  By  the  time  the  colonies  were  committed 
to  the  cause  of  independence  the  Friends  were  committed  to 
the  cause  of  abolition.  In  the  face  of  harsh  laws  which 
made  emancipation  very  difficult,  they  worked  on,  liber- 
ating their  own  slaves,  and  sometimes  buying  slaves  of  other 
people  that  they  might  liberate  them.  Those  that  they  could 
induce  to  go  they  sent  to  the  free  States ;  those  that  would 
not  go  they  transferred  to  the  Society  and  held  them  in  only 
nominal  bondage.  Thus  by  the  middle  of  the  century  they 
had  worked  slavery  out  of  their  connection.  They  ever  re- 
mained a  nucleus  for  anti-slavery  sentiment.  They  joined 
with  their  non-Quaker  neighbors  in  the  support  of  a  Manu- 
mission Society.  They  accustomed  the  people  around  them 
to  the  ideas  of  anti-slavery,  and  that  was  a  great  advance 
for  that  day. 

Thus  the  economic,  social  and  political  forces  of  the  west- 
ern counties  made  them  less  friendly  to  slavery  than  the 
eastern  counties.  Of  all  the  region  of  the  later  Confed- 
eracy, that  which  lay  in  these  counties  was  very  probably 
the  strongest  in  anti-slavery  sentiment.  It  is  not  strange 
that  out  of  the  sturdy  inhabitants  of  this  section  there  should 
have  come  leaders  who  went  so  far  as  to  condemn  certain 

1  The  Quakers  in  the  Northeastern  part  of  the  State  were  strongly 
opposed  to  slavery  and  supported  emancipation;  but  they  did  not 
become  so  notable  for  anti-slavery  spirit  as  their  western  brethren. 
This  was  probably  because  they  were  in  a  strong  pro-slavery  region. 


271]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  11 

effects  of  slavery,  and  boldly  to  denounce  the  entire  system 
as  iniquitous  and  unprofitable.  The  most  noted  of  these 
leaders  were  Hinton  Rowan  Helper,  Benjamin  Sherwood 
Hedrick  and  Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe.  The  first  two  lived 
within  this  region,  and  the  third,  although  he  was  reared 
in  a  county  which  I  have  classed  as  eastern,  belonged  to  the 
same  class  of  people  of  small  means  as  made  up  the  mass  of 
the  people  of  the  west.  One  other  name  ought  to  be  added 
to  these,  as  well  for  its  prominence  in  anti-slavery  efforts  as 
because  it  admirably  illustrates  the  conditions  under  which 
the  contest  against  slavery  must  be  waged.  This  person, 
Lunsford  Lane,  was  a  member  of  the  enslaved  race  itself, 
and  perhaps  did  his  most  effective  abolition  preaching  in 
the  way  in  which  he  rose  above  the  condition  of  a  slave,  pur- 
chased his  own  freedom  and  that  of  his  family  at  a  cost  of 
$3500,  retaining  at  all  times  the  esteem  of  the  best  people  in 
the  community  in  which  he  lived,  and  receiving  the  explo- 
sions of  the  wrath  of  the  more  violent  element  in  the  same 
community. 

Hinton  Rowan  Helper. 

Hinton  Rowan  Helper  was  born  in  Davie  county,  North 
Carolina,  December  27,  1829.  His  paternal  grandfather 
was  born  near  Heidelberg,  Germany,  and  came  to  North 
Carolina  in  1752.  His  maternal  grandfather,  who  was  of 
English  descent,  was  Cannon  Brown,  of  Virginia.  His 
father,  Daniel  Helper,  married  Sarah,  the  daughter  of  Can- 
non Brown,  and  the  pair  settled  down  on  a  small  farm  on 
Bear  creek,  a  tributary  of  the  South  Yadkin  river.  Here 
there  were  born  seven  children,  the  last  of  whom  is  the 
subject  of  this  sketch.  Daniel  Helper  died  in  the  fall  of 
1830,  and  the  widow  and  her  seven  children,  the  eldest  of 
whom  was  less  than  twelve,  were  left  to  support  themselves 
as  best  they  could.  They  had  four  slaves,  a  man  and  his 
wife  and  their  two  children,  and  from  the, labor  of  these  the 
family  managed  to  live.  The  training  of  young  Hinton 
was  such  as  many  a  backwoods  boy  gets :  rough  sports  in 


12  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [272 

the  open  air,  hunting  and  fishing,  all  kinds  of  farm  work  in 
season,  a  little  schooling  in  the  neighborhood  schools,  and 
finally  a  term  or  two  in  a  neighboring  academy,  which,  in 
this  case,  happened  to  be  in  the  village  of  Mocksville.  With 
such  an  outfit  he  found  himself  at  the  threshold  of  manhood. 
His  health  was  not  very  robust,  but  as  he  grew  older  he 
became  stronger,  and  he  is  now  an  admirable  specimen  of 
well-preserved  manhood. 

When  twenty  years  old  he  moved  to  the  city  of  New 
York,  which  he  made  his  home  for  some  months.  When 
he  came  of  age,  however,  he  started  off  to  California,  by 
way  of  Cape  Horn,  hoping  to  make  his  fortune  in  the  gold 
regions.  At  Valparaiso,  Chile,  the  ship  stopped  for  provis- 
ions and  masts,  and  this  gave  the  young  man  his  first  direct 
acquaintance  with  South  America,  a  country  with  which  his 
later  life  has  been  somewhat  closely  associated.  His  stay  in 
the  gold  region  was  short  and  unprofitable.  In  1854,  three 
years  after  he  had  set  out,  he  returned  to  the  farm  and  set- 
tled down  to  the  life  in  which  his  boyhood  had  been  spent. 
Such  a  life  was  too  dull  for  him.  His  mind  was  active,  and 
he  had  a  store  of  observations  made  during  his  absence. 
Some  minds  seem  to  be  set  on  ball  bearings,  they  work  so 
easily.  Mr.  Helper  seems  to  have  such  a  mind.  His  ready 
use  of  words  and  his  incisive  mental  processes  easily  fitted 
him  for  writing.  In  the  quiet  of  the  farm  life  he  wrote  an 
account  of  his  journey,  which  he  called  "The  Land  of  Gold." 
In  1855  the  work  was  ready  for  the  press.  He  made  arrange- 
ments for  publication  with  Mr.  Charles  Mortimer,  of  Balti- 
more, then  the  publisher  of  the  Southern  Quarterly  Review, 
and  a  strong  pro-slavery  Virginian.  In  his  travels  Mr. 
Helper  had  found  no  slave  labor.  He  had  been  struck  with 
the  superiority  of  free  labor.  This,  he  concluded,  was 
particularly  true  of  the  cities ;  and  he  thought  that  slaves 
should  be  relegated  to  the  country.  The  work  of  printing  had 
progressed  to  some  extent  when  the  publisher  discovered 
these  sentiments.  He  refused  to  print  them.  The  author, 
anxious  for  the  safe  delivery  of  his  first-born,  and  having 
already  paid  $400  for  work  done  on  the  book,  was  in  despair. 


273]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  13 

He  hesitated  as  to  what  to  do,  and  at  length  told  the  printer 
to  do  as  he  chose  with  the  matter.  Mortimer  then  cut  out 
the  objectionable  passages  and  published  the  book. 

The  result  of  this  course  was  important.  The  young 
man,  chagrined  at  what  he  deemed  an  outrage,  determined 
that  he  would  be  heard.  He  returned  to  North  Carolina 
and  began  an  extensive  study  of  the  question  of  slavery.  In 
a  year  he  had  formulated  his  views.  In  June,  1856,  a  few 
days  after  the  nomination  of  Fremont  for  the  Presidency,  he 
started  again  for  the  North,  taking  with  him  the  manuscript 
of  "The  Impending  Crisis  of  the  South."  In  Baltimore  he 
stopped  long  enough  to  aid  in  forming  a  Republican  asso- 
ciation, one  of  the  first  in  the  South,  and  destined  soon  to 
be  broken  up  by  a  pro-slavery  mob.  He  hardly  expected 
to  get  a  publisher  for  his  work  in  this  city ;  but  he,  never- 
theless, tried  to  secure  one.  Failing  completely,  he  went  on 
to  New  York.  Here  he  found  more  sympathy  for  his  views, 
but  only  a  little  aid  in  putting  them  before  the  public.  The 
work  was  offered  to  the  Harpers,  Scribner,  Appleton  and 
all  the  other  regular  publishers,  but  not  one  would  take  it. 
In  his  despair  he  offered  the  manuscript  for  nothing,  but  the 
offer  was  not  accepted.  They  all  declined,  because  to  pub- 
lish such  strong  anti-slavery  views,  or  to  have  them  brought 
out  in  connection  with  their  firms,  would  drive  away 
their  Southern  patronage.  Mr.  James  Harper,  an  Aboli- 
tionist himself,  and  a  man  to  whom  Mr.  Helper  had  brought 
a  letter  of  introduction,  said  to  the  young  author,  with  great 
frankness,  that  while  he  concurred  with  the  book  in  its  hos- 
tility to  slavery,  and  found  it  worth  bringing  out,  yet,  after 
consulting  with  his  business  partners,  it  had  been  decided 
that  publishing  it  would  cause  the  firm  to  lose  at  least  twenty 
per  cent,  of  their  annual  trade.  In  view  of  such  a  fact,  they 
did  not  dare  to  undertake  the  work. 

These  were  no  doubt  wise  business  methods,  but  they  dis- 
heartened the  author.  Between  seven  and  eight  months  he 
spent  going  from  one  publisher  to  another.  How  much  he 
suffered  in  the  meantime  will  not  be  easily  imagined.  Con- 
vinced that  he  had  a  great  principle  at  stake,  he  was  deter- 


14  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [274 

mined  to  exhaust  every  energy  to  accomplish  his  task.  This 
long  period  of  waiting  was  endured  with  steadfastness.  He 
was  committed  to  the  right  of  being  heard  on  a  question  on 
which  his  opinions  had  once  been  suppressed.  He  felt  that 
he  was  demanding  vindication.  At  length,  worn  out  with 
anxiety  and  disgusted  at  what  he  thought  a  lack  of  courage 
on  the  part  of  the  publishers,  he  decided  to  accept  an 
offer  made  by  Mr.  A.  B.  Burdick.  That  gentleman,  who 
was  a  book  agent  rather  than  a  book  publisher,  agreed  to 
issue  the  book  in  his  own  name,  Mr.  Helper  having  previ- 
ously secured  him  against  loss.  The  venture  proved  a 
handsome  success.  Mr.  Burdick  made  a  fortune  from  the 
sales,  but,  unfortunately,  lost  it  in  stock  speculation. 

"The  Impending  Crisis  of  the  South"  was  well  calculated 
to  attract  attention  in  the  North.  The  author  was  a  South- 
erner, not  of  the  slave-holding  aristocracy,  but  of  the  class 
of  small  farmers.  He  approached  the  question  from  the 
economic  side,  while  other  anti-slavery  writers  had  ap- 
proached it  from  the  side  of  the  rights  of  the  negro.  The 
literary  style  was  clear  and  cutting.  The  author  wrote  in 
behalf  of  the  non-slaveholding  whites  of  the  South,  for 
whom  he  claimed  an  opportunity  to  make  a  living.  There 
was  a  grim  directness  in  the  following  words,  taken  from 
the  preface  to  the  first  edition:  "The  genius  of  the  North 
has  also  most  ably  and  eloquently  discussed  the  subject  in 
the  form  of  novels.  New  England  wives  have  written  the 
most  popular  anti-slavery  literature  of  the  day.  Against 
this,  I  have  nothing  to  say ;  it  is  all  well  enough  for  women 
to  give  the  fictions  of  slavery;  men  should  give  the  facts." 
In  the  same  preface  he  referred  to  the  fact  that  he  was  a 
Southerner,  as  proud  as  any  of  his  birthplace,  and  added : 
"As  the  work,  considered  with  reference  to  its  author's 
nativity,  is  a  novelty,  *  *  *  so  I  indulge  the  hope  that 
its  reception  by  my  fellow-Southrons  will  be  novel ;  that  is 
to  say,  that  they  will  receive  it  as  it  is  offered,  in  a  reasonable 
and  friendly  spirit,  and  that  they  will  read  it  and  reflect  on  it 
as  an  honest  endeavor  to  treat  a  subject  of  vast  import  with- 


275]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  15 

out  rancor  or  prejudice,  by  one  who  naturally  comes  within 
the  pale  of  their  own  sympathies." 

These  were  fair  words ;  but  Mr.  Helper  must  have  known 
well  when  he  wrote  them  that  his  book  would  receive  little 
favor  in  the  South.  If  he  hoped  otherwise,  he  was  soon  un- 
deceived. The  appearance  of  the  work  in  the  summer  of  1857 
was  the  signal  for  a  flood  of  denunciation  from  that  quarter. 
It  was  at  once  declared  to  come  within  the  provision  of  the 
laws  against  the  circulation  of  incendiary  literature.  To 
own  a  copy  was  against  good  taste,  and  traitorous  to  the 
interest  of  the  South.  In  1859  John  A.  Gilmer  was  the 
Whig  candidate  for  the  governorship  in  North  Carolina. 
His  opponents  charged  him  with  owning  a  copy  of  "The 
Impending  Crisis.'  His  friends  replied  by  declaring  that 
John  W.Ellis,  the  Democratic  candidate,  had  a  copy.  The 
Raleigh  Standard,  the  leading  Democratic  paper  of  the  State, 
indignantly  denied  the  charge  against  Ellis.  The  truth  of 
the  matter,  it  said,  was  that  in  1858,  while  Ellis  was  in  New 
York,  Mr.  Helper,  who  had  known  him  in  North  Carolina, 
called  on  him  and  later  on  sent  a  copy  of  the  book.  This 
Mr.  Ellis  threw  out  of  the  window.  Sometime  later  Gov- 
ernor Ellis  received  another  copy  through  the  mails,  and 
that  he  used  for  lighting  his  pipe.1  Making  bonfires  of  the 
book  was  a  mild  feature  of  its  reception  in  many  parts  of  the 
South.  The  Northern  papers  reported  that  a  number  of 
persons  were  hanged  or  otherwise  killed  for  having  copies 
in  their  possession.  The  truth  of  the  latter  statement  it 
has  been  impossible  to  prove. 

The  enemies  of  Mr.  Helper  tried  to  break  down  his  argu- 
ments by  blackening  his  character.  It  was  charged  that  he 
had  taken  fraudulently  a  sum  of  money  from  an  employer 
in  Salisbury,  N.  C,  and  that  when  accused  of  the  crime  he 
had  admitted  it,  alleging  that  he  was  at  the  time  only  seven- 
teen years  old,  and  that  another  clerk  had  induced  him  to 
take  the  money.  This  charge  was  repeated  by  Senator 
Biggs,  of  North  Carolina,  in  a  congressional   debate,  in 

1  Raleigh,  N.  C.  Standard,  Aug.  10,  1859. 


16  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [276 

1857.1  Mr.  Helper  and  his  friends  indignantly  denied  the 
charge,  and  produced  a  certificate  from  his  former  employer 
stating  that  it  was  false.2  This  accusation  continued  to  be 
repeated  by  the  Southerners.3  The  Standard  believed  the 
charge,  and  doubtless  but  echoed  public  sentiment  in  the 
State  when,  in  1859,  it  said  that  Helper  was  good  enough 
for  the  Abolitionists ;  he  stole  money,  while  Greeley  and 
Thurlow  Weed  wanted  to  steal  slaves :  there  was  no  dif- 
ference. 

The  reception  of  "The  Impending  Crisis"  by  the  Northern 
public,  while  favorable,  was  not  immediately  flattering.  Its 
great  popularity  was  doubtless  caused  by  the  political  inter- 
est that  sprang  out  of  it.  This  came  about  in  this  way : 
In  1857  a  gentleman  from  Rhode  Island,  whose  name  is  not 
given,  acting  in  conjunction  with  Mr.  John  Bigelow,  asso- 
ciate editor  of  the  New  York  Evening  Post,  made  arrange- 
ments to  print  100,000  copies  of  a  compendium  of  "The 
Impending  Crisis."  The  panic  of  that  year  coming  on  soon 
after,  the  project  was  dropped.  In  March,  1859,  the  scheme 
was  revived  in  a  different  form.  A  number  of  gentlemen, 
among  whom  were  Samuel  E.  Sewell,  Cassius  M.  Clay,  F. 
P.  Blair,  Jr.,  Charles  W.  Elliot,  David  Dudley  Field  and 
Charles  A.  Peabody,  now  issued  a  circular,  calling  for  sub- 
scriptions to  a  fund  of  $15,000  in  order  to  print,  as  a  cam- 
paign document,  100,000  copies  of  such  a  compendium. 
The  circular  said,  among  other  things :  "No  other  volume 
now  before  the  public,  as  we  conceive,  is,  in  all  respects,  so 
well  calculated  to  induce  in  the  minds  of  its  readers  a  decided 
and  persistent  repugnance  to  slavery  and  a  willingness  to 
cooperate  in  the  effort  to  restrain  the  shameless  advances 
and  hurtful  influences  of  that  pernicious  institution."  The 
scheme  was  endorsed  by  the  leading  Republican  members 
of  Congress,  among  whom  were  Messrs.  Colfax,  Grow,  Gid- 


1  Raleigh,  N.  C.  Standard,  Dec.  7,  1859. 

2  The  New  Englander,  Vol.  15,  p.  647. 

3  See  Samuel  M.  Wolf's  "  Helper's  Impending  Crisis  Dissected  " 
)i86o),  p.  75. 


277]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  17 

dings,  Dawes,  Washburn  and  John  Sherman,  and  by  the 
most  prominent  Abolition  leaders,  among  whom  were 
Thurlow  Weed,  Wm.  Cullen  Bryant,  B.  S.  Hedrick  and 
Horace  Greeley.  The  latter  gentlemen  declared :  "Were 
every  citizen  in  possession  of  the  facts  embodied  in  this 
book,  we  feel  confident  that  slavery  would  soon  pass  away, 
while  a  Republican  triumph  in  i860  would  be  morally  cer- 
tain." It  is  of  interest  to  know  that  of  the  amount  collected, 
North  Carolinians  subscribed  $165.  Among  the  subscrib- 
ers were  Professor  Hedrick  and  Mr.  Goodloe,  whom  the 
Raleigh  Standard  described  as  "two  other  recreant  sons  of 
this  State.1 

The  plans  thus  set  forth  were  accomplished.  One  hun- 
dred thousand  copies  of  the  compendium  were  printed  in 
i860  and  distributed  throughout  the  doubtful  States  of 
Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  Indiana  and  Illinois.  In  their 
estimate  of  the  book  the  Abolitionists  were  right.  Its  style 
cut  like  a  knife.  It  showed  clearness,  conviction,  and  a  cer- 
tain intensity  which  would  likely  make  a  more  striking 
appeal  to  the  voters  than  the  more  restrained  statements  of 
a  more  scholarly  work.  It  was  not  free  from  the  vivid  rhet- 
oric to  be  expected  from  a  self-taught  young  man  from  the 
backwoods,  and  yet,  for  the  purposes  in  view,  this  was  no 
disadvantage. 

The  success  of  this  circular  was  not  calculated  to  soothe 
the  feelings  of  the  Southern  Democrats,  whose  feelings  were 
already  at  the  highest  pitch.  Their  newspapers  took  up  the 
matter,  publishing  extracts  to  show  that  "The  Impending 
Crisis"  was  incendiary.  To  the  Southerners  this  was  a  de- 
liberate purpose  of  the  Republicans  to  arouse  the  entire 
North  against  the  South.  Shortly  after  the  compendium 
scheme  was  assured  there  occurred  John  Brown's  attacks 
on  Harper's  Ferry.  The  South  was  more  convinced  than 
ever  of  the  harmfulness  of  the  book  which  the  Abolitionists 
were  using  to  propagate  their  doctrines.  While  affairs 
were  in  this  shape  Congress  met.     The  caucus  nominee  of 

1  Raleigh  Standard,  Dec.  7,  1S59. 


18  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [278 

the  Republicans  for  the  Speakership  was  John  Sherman, 
who,  with  other  Congressmen,  had  signed  the  above-men- 
tioned circular.  To  his  election  the  Southerners  opposed 
their  strongest  efforts.  As  soon  as  Congress  met  a  resolution 
was  introduced  which  declared  "That  no  person  who  has 
endorsed  and  recommended  [Helper's]  book,  or  the  com- 
pendium from  it,  is  fit  to  be  Speaker  of  this  House."  One 
of  the  fiercest  debates  in  the  history  of  that  body  now  began. 
Southern  members  used  the  bitterest  threats.  Members 
on  each  side  went  armed,  fearing  a  resort  to  force.  The 
debate  on  the  resolution  was  dropped  long  enough  to  take 
some  ballots  for  Speaker,  but  without  any  election.  Ig- 
noring the  usual  holiday  recess,  the  contestants  went  on 
until,  on  January  30,  i860,  Sherman  withdrew  his  name. 
Three  days  later  Pennington,  of  New  Jersey,  was  elected 
by  the  Republican  and  American  votes.1 

The  attracting  of  public  attention  to  "The  Impending 
Crisis"  had  a  most  exciting  effect  on  its  sale,  which  hitherto 
had  not  been  extraordinary.  The  demand  for  it  was  now 
immense.  Copies  might  be  seen  in  stacks  on  every  news 
stand  and  in  every  book  store  of  the  North.  Some  pro- 
slavery  men  tried  to  prevent  its  sale.  The  president  of  the 
Norristown  Railroad  Company  ordered  that  it  should  not 
be  sold  in  the  railroad  cars,  the  gentlemen's  waiting-rooms, 
or  the  railway  stations.2  Such  efforts  were  in  vain.  By 
the  autumn  of  i860,  142,000  copies,  including  the  com- 
pendium, had  been  sold.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  other  Ameri- 
can book  not  fiction,  except,  perhaps,  Mr.  Harvey's  "Coin's 
Financial  School,"  has  reached  so  great  a  circulation  in  so 
short  a  time.  Had  the  war  not  begun  in  1861,  which  de- 
stroyed the  occupation  of  more  Abolitionists  than  one,  the 
circulation  would  have  gone  much  higher. 

A  more  impartial  view  of  the  book  from  a  scholar's  stand- 
point would  be  the  book  reviews  it  received  at  the  time  it 

1  See  the  preface  of  the  "Impending  Crisis,"  (i860). 

2  See  Garrison's  Liberator,  Jan.  20,  i860. 


279]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  19 

was  published.  The  New  Englandcr  (Vol.  75,  p.  635,  1857), 
in  calling  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  author  wrote  from 
the  side  of  sociology,  said :  "On  the  subject  in  this  depart- 
ment he  has  made  the  most  complete  and  effective  presenta- 
tion within  our  knowledge.  It  is  thorough,  reliable,  demon- 
strating, overwhelming.  It  consists  of  facts  which  cannot 
be  denied  or  gainsaid;  facts  derived  to  a  large  extent  by 
careful  examination  and  comparison  from  the  census,  which 
cannot  be  suspected  of  anti-slavery  bias,  since  it  was  com- 
piled under  the  direction  of  an  eminent  statistician  who  is 
notorious  for  his  pro-slavery  principles  and  zeal."  The 
Westminster  Review,  having  less  interest  in  the  conflict,  and 
being  more  critical  in  point  of  style,  said,  with  much  just- 
ness :  "The  style  of  production  is  peculiarly  American. 
Its  language  and  ideas  alike  are  often  extravagant,  and  its 
allusions  sometimes  very  personal.  Statistics  and  other 
facts  are  well  arranged  and  fully  authenticated,  but  the  con- 
clusions of  the  author  are  not  always  correct,  and  occasion- 
ally exhibit  a  want  of  practical  political  knowledge.1 

The  burden  of  Mr.  Helper's  story  was  the  benefiting  of 
the  non-slaveholding  whites  of  the  South.  These  ought  to 
be  distinguished  from  the  "poor  whites."  The  latter  were 
a  class,  in  themselves  more  or  less  shiftless,  living  around 
among  the  large  plantations,  without  ambition  and  mostly 
in  extreme  poverty.  They  were  largely  wrecks,  both  indus- 
trial and  moral,  on  the  shores  of  society;  although  a  child 
occasionally  came  out  from  among  them  whose  efforts 
enabled  him  to  reach  a  high  place  in  society.  The  former 
class  were  the  small  farmers  who  worked  their  lands  with- 
out slave  labor.  They  were  most  numerous  in  the  west, 
among  the  Scotch-Irish  and  the  Germans.  They  were 
thrifty  and  sturdy,  and  when  they  removed  to  the  North- 
west, as  many  of  them  did  to  escape  the  effects  of  slavery, 
they  proved  valuable  citizens.  Emancipation  of  the  slaves 
would  have  been  a  blessing  to  either  of  these  classes.  By 
it  one  class  would  have  been  raised  slowly  from  degrada- 

1  Vol.  75"(i86i),  p.  81. 


20  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [280 

tion  to  respectability,  the  other  from  respectability  to  wealth. 
What  either  of  these  classes  suffered  from  the  slaveholders 
is  seen  in  this  extract  from  Helper :  He  says  there  were 
several  kinds  of  pine  near  his  boyhood  home,  "by  the  light 
of  whose  flamable  knots,  as  radiated  on  the  contents  of  some 
half-dozen  old  books,  which,  by  hook  or  crook,  had  found 
their  way  into  the  neighborhood,  we  have  been  enabled  to 
turn  the  long  winter  evenings  to  some  advantage,  and  have 
thus  partially  escaped  from  the  prison  grounds  of  those 
loathsome  dungeons  of  illiteracy  in  which  it  has  been  the 
constant  policy  of  the  oligarchy  to  keep  the  masses,  the  non- 
slaveholding  whites  and  the  negroes,  forever  confined."1 

To  improve  the  condition  of  this  class  it  was  necessary  to 
abolish  slavery.  He  started  out  to  learn  "why  the  North 
has  surpassed  the  South."  He  boldly  attacked  the  notion 
that  the  South  excelled  the  North  in  agriculture.  From  the 
census  of  Professor  De  Bow  himself,  who  was  a  strong 
Southerner,  he  showed  that  in  bushel-measure  products  the 
North  was  far  ahead  of  the  South,  and  that  the  hay  crop 
alone  of  the  North  was  worth  more  than  all  the  cotton, 
tobacco,  rice,  hay,  hemp  and  cane-sugar  raised  in  the  South. 
This  comparison  was  also  made  in  regard  to  farm  animals, 
total  wealth,  gross  expenditure  and  various  other  items  from 
the  census  columns.  These  arguments,  inasmuch  as  they 
attempt  to  prove  the  superiority  of  free  labor  over  slave 
labor,  were  well  taken.  The  North  and  the  South  had  be- 
gun the  period  of  national  existence  about  equal  in  re- 
sources and  opportunity.  That  the  latter  section  had  fallen 
so  far  behind  must  be  due  to  slavery.  In  summing  up  this 
feature  of  the  question  he  uttered  the  following  character- 
istic sentence :  "It  makes  us  poor ;  poverty  make  us  ignor- 
ant ;  ignorance  makes  us  wretched ;  wretchedness  makes  us 
wicked,  and  wickedness  leads  us  to  the  devil." 

Sound  as  the  argument  was,  there  was  much  that  was  cal- 
culated to  make  Southern  blood  boil.     It  was  a  time  of  stern 

1  The  Impending  Crisis,  p.  no. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  74- 


281]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  21 

conviction.  Each  side  had  little  of  the  spirit  of  toleration. 
Mr.  Helper  ought  not  to  be  blamed,  perhaps,  that  he  did  not 
rise  above  the  spirit  of  his  surroundings.  Certain  it  is,  he 
was  no  master  of  saying  unpleasant  truths  in  a  palatable 
way.  At  times  he  spoke  bluntly,  often  bitterly.  In  one 
place  he  exclaims:  "No  man  of  genuine  decency  and  re- 
finement would  have  them  [the  negroes]  as  property  on  any 
terms."1  Speaking  of  the  increase  that  would  be  realized 
in  the  value  of  lands  if  slavery  were  abolished,  he  said,  ad- 
dressing the  slaveholders :  "Now,  sirs,  this  last  sum  is  con- 
siderably more  than  twice  as  great  as  the  estimated  value  of 
all  your  negroes,  and  those  of  you,  if  any  there  be,  who  are 
yet  heirs  to  sane  minds  and  generous  hearts,  must,  it  seems 
to  us,  admit  that  the  bright  prospects  which  freedom  pre- 
sents for  a  wonderful  increase  in  the  value  of  real  estate, 
ours  as  well  as  yours,  to  say  nothing  of  the  thousand  other 
kindred  considerations,  ought  to  be  quite  sufficient  to  in- 
duce all  the  Southern  States  in  their  sovereign  capacities  to 
abolish  slavery  at  the  earliest  practicable  period."2  In  the 
same  spirit  he  finds  in  the  South  "three  odious  classes  of 
mankind ;  the  slaves  themselves,  who  are  cowards ;  the 
slaveholders,  who  are  tyrants;  the  non-slaveholding  slave- 
hirers,  who  are  lickspittles !\  He  arraigned  severely  "the 
illbreeding  and  ruffianism  of  the  slaveholding  officials"  for 
their  conduct  in  Washington,  where,  "on  frequent  occa- 
sions, choking  with  rage  at  seeing  their  wretched  sophistries 
scattered  to  the  winds  by  the  logical  reasoning  of  the  cham- 
pions of  freedom,  they  have  overstepped  the  bounds  of  com- 
mon decency,  vacated  the  chair  of  honorable  controversy, 
and,  in  the  most  brutal  and  cowardly  manner  assailed  their 
unarmed  opponents  with  bludgeons,  bowie-knives  and  pis- 
tols. Compared  with  some  of  their  barbarisms  at  home, 
however,  their  frenzied  onslaughts  at  the  National  Capital 
have  been  but  the  simplest  breach  of  civil  deportment,  and 
it  is  only  for  the  purpose  of  avoiding  personalities  that  we 
refrain  from  divulging  a  few  instances  of  the  unparalleled 

1  The  Impending  Crisis,  p.  75.      2  Ibid.,  p.  107.      3  Ibid.,  p.  118. 


22  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [282 

atrocities  they  have  perpetrated  in  the  legislative  halls  south 
of  the  Potomac.  *  *  *  A  few  years  of  entire  freedom 
from  the  cares  and  perplexities  of  public  life  would,  we  have 
no  doubt,  greatly  improve  both  their  manners  and  their 
morals;  and  we  suggest  that  it  is  a  Christian  duty,  which 
devolves  on  the  non-slaveholders  of  the  South,  to  disrobe 
them  of  the  mantles  of  office,  which  they  have  so  worn  with 
disgrace  to  themselves,  injustice  to  their  constituents,  and 
ruin  to  their  country."1 

The  last  sentence  brings  up  the  non-slaveholders,  whose 
wrongs  he  breathed  out  as  fire.  He  said  to  the  slavehold- 
ers "Do  you  aspire  to  become  the  victims  of  white  non-slave 
holding  vengeance  by  day,  and  of  the  barbarous  massacre 
of  the  negroes  by  night?  Would  you  be  instrumental  in 
bringing  upon  yourselves,  your  wives  and  your  children,  a 
fate  too  horrible  to  contemplate?  Shall  history  cease  to 
cite  as  an  instance  of  unexampled  cruelty  the  massacre  of 
St.  Bartholomew,  because  the  world — the  South — shall 
have  furnished  a  more  direful  scene  of  atrocity  and  carnage? 
Sirs,  we  would  not  wantonly  pluck  a  single  hair  from  your 
heads ;  but  we  have  endured  long,  we  have  endured  much ; 
slaves  only  of  the  most  despicable  class  would  endure  more. 
*  *  *  Out  of  your  effects  you  have  long  since  overpaid 
youselves  for  your  negroes,  and  now,  sirs,  you  must  eman- 
cipate them — speedily  emancipate  them  or  we  will  emanci- 
pate them  for  you  !"2  This  extract  smacks  of  insurrection. 
In  another  place  this  is  found :  "In  reason  and  in  con- 
science, it  must  be  admitted,  the  slaves  might  claim  for  them- 
selves a  reasonable  allowance  of  the  proceeds  of  their  labor. 
If  they  were  to  demand  an  equal  share  of  all  the  property, 
real  and  personal,  which  has  been  accumulated  or  produced 
through  their  effort,  heaven,  we  believe,  would  recognize 
them  as  honest  claimants."3  These  sentiments  seemingly 
grew  out  of  a  commendable  sympathy  for  the  slaves,  and 
they  had  a  certain  justification  in  facts,  yet  it  is  impossible 

1  The  Impending  Crisis,  pp.  131-2.  2  Ibid.,  p.  106. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  142. 


283]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  23 

not  to  see  that  preaching  them  to  the  slaves  would  have 
tended  to  arouse  the  negroes  to  insurrection.  It  is  but  just 
to  add  that  such  extreme  statements  occur  rarely,  and  char- 
ity should  prompt  us  to  think  that  when  they  do  occur  they 
are  but  temporary  feelings  which  sober  action  would  repu- 
diate. 

But  it  was  the  effect  that  the  book  might  have  on  the  non- 
slaveholding  whites,  more  than  its  effect  on  the  negroes, 
that  the  slave-owners  feared.  Well  might  they  have  feared 
on  this  score.  In  1850  the  white  population  of  the  slave 
States  was  6,184,477.  About  1,200,000  of  these  must  have 
been  voters.  Mr.  Helper  calculated  on  the  basis  of  De 
Bow's  census  that  not  more  than  200,000  slaveholders  were 
voters.1  Accordingly,  the  non-slaveholding  voters  must 
have  had  a  vast  majority  of  the  votes.  What  must  have 
been  the  result  if  these  votes  could  have  been  united  against 
the  slave  power?  He  appealed  to  the  non-slaveholders. 
He  told  them  that  they  had  had  all  the  burdens  of  govern- 
ment and  none  of  the  benefits  of  legislation ;  they  had  fur- 
nished the  fighting  force  of  the  armies  of  the  South,  yet 
they  had  never  received  from  the  legislators  even  "the  lim- 
ited privileges  of  common  schools,"  while  the  slaveholders 
had  gone  to  the  North  for  their  teachers  and  their  skilled 
mechanics,  and  when  asked  to  do  so  had  contemptuously 
refused  to  redress  the  wrongs  of  the  non-slaveholders. 
Today  this  may  suggest  the  demagogue,  but  there  is  a  deal 
of  truth  in  it.  The  remedy  must  be  political.  He  said: 
"Give  us  fair  play,  secure  to  us  the  right  of  discussion,  the 
freedom  of  speech,  and  we  will  settle  the  difficulty  at  the 
ballot-box."  His  programme  embraced  seven  principles : 
"1.  Thorough  organization  and  independent  political  ac- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  non-slaveholding  whites  of  the 
South.  2.  Ineligibility  of  pro-slavery  slaveholders ;  never 
another  vote  to  anyone  who  advocates  the  retention  and 
perpetuation  of  human  slavery.  3.  No  cooperation  with 
pro-slavery  politicians ;  no  fellowship  with  them  in  religion ; 

1  The  Impending  Crisis,  p.  117. 


24  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [284 

no  affiliation  with  them  in  society.  4.  No  patronage  of  pro- 
slavery  merchants,  no  guestship  in  slave-waiting  hotels ;  no 
fees  to  pro-slavery  lawyers ;  no  employment  of  pro-slavery 
physicians;  no  audience  to  pro-slavery  parsons.  5.  No 
hiring  of  slaves  by  non-slaveholders.  6.  Abrupt  discontin- 
uance of  subscriptions  to  pro-slavery  newspapers.  7.  The 
greatest  possible  encouragement  to  free  white  labor."1 

To  put  these  measures  into  force  he  proposed  the  calling 
of  a  convention  of  non-slaveholders  from  every  State  in  the 
Union.  This  should  devise  the  means  of  fighting  slavery, 
and  should  publish  a  platform  of  principles  and  invite  the 
support  of  the  non-slaveholders  of  the  South  and  South- 
west. The  tendency  of  this  scheme  toward  Republican 
politics  is  evident.  Of  course  the  Democrats  opposed  it. 
Exceptions  can  only  be  taken  to  the  methods  by  which 
they  opposed  it.  It  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  the  fate  of  a 
half-dozen  Republican  speakers,  who,  acting  on  Mr.  Hel- 
per's suggestion,  might  have  gone  to  North  Carolina  to  or- 
ganize the  non-slaveholding  whites.  An  illustration  of 
what  would  have  befallen  them  we  have  in  the  experience" of 
Rev.  Daniel  Worth.  Were  it  not  that  slavery  and  the  for- 
tunes of  many  good  but  mistaken  people  went  down  so 
disastrously  in  the  avalanche  of  war,  words  could  not  be 
found  too  strong  to  denounce  the  false  spirit  that  made  it 
impossible  to  preach  in  a  fair  manner  a  doctrine  of  simple 
political  principles  and  to  appeal  in  a  constitutional  way  to 
the  best  intelligence  of  those  who  were  recognized  as  legal 
voters.  More  unfortunate  than  reprehensible  was  it  that 
the  spirit  of  intolerance  had  so  taken  possession  of  some  of 
the  leading  people  of  the  State  as  is  shown  by  the  incident 
which  will  now  be  related. 

Rev.  Daniel  Worth  was  a  native  of  Guilford  county, 
North  Carolina,  where,  in  early  life,  he  had  been  a  justice  of 
the  peace.  Later  he  removed  to  Indiana,  and  at  length  be- 
came a  member  of  the  legislature  in  that  State.  Late  in 
1858  he  returned  to  the  neighborhood  of  his  birthplace  as  a 


1  The  Impending  Crisis,  pp.  123-4. 


285]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  25 

preacher  in  the  Wesleyan  Methodist  Church.  He  preached 
the  doctrine  of  his  church,  which  was  strongly  anti-slavery, 
not  without  criticism,  but,  on  account  of  the  good  feeling  for 
his  kinsmen,  who  were  prominent  people,  without  molesta- 
tion. He  planted  a  church  at  Sandy  Ridge,  near  James- 
town, in  Guilford  county,  and  his  postoffice  was  New 
Salem.  His  church  had  but  few  members.  He  aroused 
the  opposition  of  many  Quakers,  most  of  whom  were  for 
non-intervention  in  regard  to  slavery.  Worth  thought  they 
should  be  more  positive  in  their  opposition. 

In  December,  1859,  after  the  Harper's  Ferry  affair,  Mr. 
Worth  was  arrested  on  the  charge  of  circulating  Helper's 
book,  and  of  preaching  in  a  way  "to  make  slaves  and 
free  negroes  dissatisfied  with  their  condition."  He  was 
required  to  give  bond  of  $5000  for  his  appearance  at  the 
Superior  Court  the  following  spring,  and  of  $5000  more  to 
keep  the  peace.  The  first  bond  he  gave.  The  second  he 
thought  unjust,  and  would  not  give.  He  was  accordingly 
confined  in  the  Greensboro  jail  throughout  the  winter. 
While  there  the  sheriff  of  Randolph  county  arrested  him  on 
the  same  charge,  and  bound  him  over  to  the  spring  court. 
Other  sheriffs  waited  around  the  place  for  him,  fearing  that 
he  might  be  released  and  escape.  While  he  was  in  prison 
five  other  men  were  arrested  in  Guilford  and  several  more 
in  Randolph,  charged  with  having  distributed  Helper's 
book.  One  of  these  was  Jesse  Wheeler  and  another  was 
an  old  man  named  Samuel  Turner.  All  of  these  seem  to 
have  been  natives  who  were  converted  by  Mr.  Worth's  ap- 
peals. The  Raleigh  Standard  bore  witness  to  his  success. 
It  said  that  a  few  months  before  this  occurrence  only  one 
copy  of  the  New  York  Tribune  came  to  Mr.  Worth's  post- 
office,  and  that  came  to  Mr.  Worth  himself.  Now  twelve 
copies  were  received  there.  To  this  it  added :  "We  think 
it  probable  that  one  hundred  to  two  hundred  copies  of  the 
Tribune  are  circulated  in  this  State,  together  with  numer- 
ous abolition  pamphlets  from  Indiana  and  Ohio." 
Wheeler  alone  was  said  to  have  distributed  more  than  fifty 


26  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [286 

copies  of  "The  Impending  Crisis."  On  his  trial  before  the 
magistrate  that  committed  him,  Mr.  Worth  read  from  the 
book  in  order  to  show  that  it  was  not  incendiary,  a  proceed- 
ing which  the  Raleigh  Standard  seems  to  have  considered 
especially  provoking. 

The  arrest  occasioned  great  excitement  in  the  vicinity, 
and  for  a  time  crowds  surrounded  the  jail.  A  great  crowd 
was  in  the  courtroom  when  the  case  finally  came  to  trial. 
The  case  was  taken  up  and  finished  in  one  sitting.  It  was 
midnight  when  it  went  to  the  jury.  In  his  charge  the  judge 
is  reported  to  have  said  that  "to  sustain  the  allegation  of 
seeking  to  excite  the  slaves  and  free  colored  people  to  dis- 
content, it  was  not  necessary  to  prove  that  the  book  had 
been  read  by  or  recited  to  a  free  negro  or  slave,  or  that  any 
such  knew  anything  or  any  part  of  its  contents."1  The  jury 
returned  at  4  A.  M.  with  the  verdict  of  "guilty."  The  jury, 
said  the  Fayetteville  (N.  C.)  Presbyterian,  was  composed 
largely  of  non-slaveholders.3  The  legal  penalty  was  im- 
prisonment for  not  less  than  one  year  and  the  pillory  or  the 
whipping-post,  in  the  discretion  of  the  judge.  The  court 
remitted  the  whipping  on  account  of  the  age  and  calling  of 
the  prisoner,  and  sentenced  him  to  one  year's  imprison- 
ment. Many  of  the  bystanders,  said  the  New  York  Tribune, 
regretted  the  leniency  of  the  court,  and  hoped  that  a  more 
severe  judge  in  another  county  might  add  the  whipping. 
From  this  judgment  the  prisoner  appealed  to  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  State,  and  giving  a  bond  of  $3000,  he  was  re- 
leased. He  at  once  repaired  to  New  York  city,  where  he 
made  anti-slavery  speeches  and  tried  to  raise  money  enough 
to  repay  the  loss  of  his  bondsmen.  His  bondsmen  were 
his  sympathizers,  and  the  court  records  show  that  they  were 
required  to  pay  the  forfeited  bonds.  On  appeal,  the  judg- 
ment of  the  lower  court  was  confirmed.  It  is  likely  that 
the  authorities  of  Guilford  were  glad  to  be  rid  of  him,  so 
much  attention  was  his  case  attracting  in  the  North.     He 

1  See  N  C.  Standard,  Jan.  4,  i860.     Dec.  14  and  21,  1859. 
*  Copied  in  The  Liberator,  June  15,  i860. 


287]  Hinton  Rowan  Helper.  27 

lived  through  the  war  that  settled  the  question  of  slavery, 
and  died  within  two  years  after  its  termination.1 

After  the  publication  of  "The  Impending  Crisis,"  Mr. 
Helper  did  not  feel  that  it  would  be  safe  for  him  to  return  to 
his  home.  He  accordingly  remained  in  New  York  in  busi- 
ness. In  1861  President  Lincoln  appointed  him  Consul  to 
Buenos  Ayres.  He  arrived  at  his  post  in  the  following 
spring.  In  1863  he  married  Miss  Mary  Louisa  Rodriguez, 
of  Buenos  Ayres.  His  official  services  at  this  place  were 
satisfactory,  but  uneventful.  In  November,  1866,  he  re- 
signed his  position  and  sailed  for  America.  He  made  his 
home  in  New  York  city,  where,  with  some  interruptions,  he 
has  since  continued  to  reside. 

It  was  about  the  time  of  his  return  from  South  America 
that  he  severed  his  connection  with  the  old  leaders  of  the 
anti-slavery  cause.  When  he  took  up  the  study  of  slavery 
he  took  it  up  merely  as  it  affected  the  whites.  He  never 
was  an  advocate  of  the  equal  rights  of  the  negro.  On  the 
contrary,  he  has  always  had  too  violent  aversion  for  them. 
To  this  day  he  will  have  nothing  to  do  in  a  business  way 
with  any  hotel  or  other  enterprise  that  employs  negroes.  He 
regards  the  negro  as  an  inferior  race,  without  possibility  of 
satisfactory  progress,  and  would  hail  with  delight  the  day 
when  not  one  of  the  race  should  be  in  the  country.  These 
views  are  not  wanting  in  "The  Impending  Crisis ;"  but  in 
1857  they  were  overshadowed,  both  in  his  own  and  in  the 
popular  mind,  by  the  question  of  the  evil  effects  of  slavery 
on  the  whites.  With  the  question  of  slavery  gone,  his  mind 
turned  to  the  negro.  He  saw  how  much  the  presence  of 
the  negro  had  retarded  Southern  progress,  and  he  con- 
ceived a  positive  dislike  for  the  whole  race.  While  in 
Buenos  Ayres  a  friend  requested  him  to  furnish  American 
papers  of  protection  to  a  negro,  but  he  stoutly  declined,  on 
the  ground  that  the  "United  States  of  America  are  already 
burdened  with  four  million  too  many"  of  negroes. 

1  See  Helper's  "Nojoque",  p.  199. 


28  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [288 

When  he  returned  to  North  America  the  Republicans 
were  coming  to  deal  with  the  negro  problem.  Their  attitude 
did  not  meet  with  his  approval.  His  pen,  always  facile,  at 
once  went  to  work ;  and  by  the  middle  of  the  next  year  he 
published  "Nojoque,  a  Question  for  a  Continent."  Mr. 
Helper's  best  friends  must  regret  that  he  should  have  writ- 
ten this  book.  It  is  a  severe,  and,  at  times,  an  unreasonably 
violent,  attack  on  the  negro.  It  assailed,  in  the  strongest 
way,  what  it  stigmatized  as  the  "Black  Congress,"  and  pro- 
posed an  alliance  between  white  Republicans  and  loyal 
Democrats,  which,  having  secured  control  of  the  govern- 
ment, should  offer  the  negroes  aid  to  get  out  of  the  country 
by  a  specified  time.  Those  that  did  not  go  should  be  sent 
away  by  main  force  or  "be  quickly  fossilized  in  bulk  be- 
neath the  subsoil  of  America."  The  plan  was,  in  short,  to 
expel  as  many  as  could  be  persuaded  to  go,  and  to  massacre 
the  others.  As  a  part  of  the  history  of  the  time,  the  book 
deserves  no  consideration.  It  is  only  in  connection  with  its 
author,  who  did  before  this  a  great  part  in  a  most  important 
work,  that  it  need  be  mentioned  at  all.  It  is  charitable  to 
say  that  recent  events  had  so  accustomed  Mr.  Helper  to 
death  that  he  was  inconsiderate  of  the  value  of  human  rights 
and  human  life.  As  to  his  estimate  of  the  negro,  it  is 
enough,  in  view  of  the  development  of  opinion  on  the  sub- 
ject both  North  and  South,  to  say  that  he  underestimated 
the  blacks.  Two  other  books  in  the  same  spirit  followed 
closely  on  "Nojoque."  These  were  "Negroes  in  Negro- 
land,"  and  "Noonday  Exigencies." 

One  result  of  these  later  books  was  to  sever  completely 
his  relations  with  the  old  leaders  of  the  Abolitionists.  His 
failure  to  accept  the  theory  of  the  equality  of  man  had  always 
prevented  them  from  receiving  him  with  warmth.  They 
now  dropped  him  altogether,  and  Henry  Wilson,  in  1875, 
when  he  wrote  the  "History  of  the  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Slave 
Power  in  America,"  failed  to  give  him  credit  for  the  great 
influence  of  "The  Impending  Crisis."  The  cause  seems  to 
have  been  the  views  of  the  negro  problem  expressed  in 
these  post-bellum  publications. 


289]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick.  29 

Mr.  Helper's  later  years  have  been  given  to  the  promo- 
tion of  the  Intercontinental  Railroad,  a  scheme  by  which  it 
is  proposed  to  build  a  railway  from  some  point  in  the  upper 
Mississippi  basin,  through  Mexico  and  Central  America, 
across  the  highlands  on  the  east  of  the  Andes  and  across  tfie 
plains  to  Buenos  Ayres.  Later  developments  would  ex- 
tend this  road  until  it  should  at  last  reach  the  Hudson  Bay 
on  the  north,  and  the  Straits  of  Magellan  on  the  south.  He 
removed  to  St.  Louis,  Mo.,  that  he  might  better  push  this 
scheme.  With  characteristic  ardor  he  offered  large  prizes 
for  the  five  best  essays  on  the  advantage  of  his  scheme,  and 
then  published  these  essays  at  his  own  cost.  In  various 
ways  he  has  spent  on  this  project  $48,000  out  of  his  own 
pocket.  The  recent  Pan-American  Congress  took  up  the 
matter  and  secured  appropriations  by  the  various  nations 
for  the  support  of  an  Intercontinental  Railway  Commission, 
which  has  offices  in  Washington  city.  Three  corps  of  engi- 
neers have  been  sent  to  survey  the  routes.  Their  work  is 
accomplished,  and  the  reports  will  soon  be  published.1  In 
the  meantime  certain  roads  have  been  built  independently 
of  one  another,  which  may  easily  be  used  as  sections  of  the 
proposed  larger  system.  The  evident  advantage  of  such  a 
road  makes  it  certain  that  as  the  countries  through  which  it 
will  pass  become  more  thickly  settled  it  will  necessarily  be 
built.  Mr.  Helper's  scheme,  and  the  most  commendable 
persistence  he  has  shown  in  his  thirty  years  of  sacrifice  and 
effort  in  its  behalf,  has  drawn  the  eyes  of  business  men 
toward  the  opportunity,  and  in  the  day  when  it  shall  be 
made  a  real  fact  the  pluck  of  its  promoter  will  be  appreci- 
ated by  the  public.  At  present  Mr.  Helper  remains  a  hale 
and  active  man  of  sixty-seven,  kind  to  those  who  call  on 
him,  and  ever  hopeful  for  the  project  which  he  has  on  his 
hands. 

Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick. 

Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick,  eldest  son  of  John  Leonard 
Hedrick  and  Elizabeth  Sherwood  Hedrick,  was  born  in 


1  This  fact  was  recorded  in  1896.    Later  information  is  not  at  hand. 


SO  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [290 

Davidson  county,  near  Salisbury,  N.  C,  February  13,  1827. 
The  name  indicates  that  the  family  was  sprung  from  the 
German  stock,  which  had  a  large  share  in  settling  this  part 
of  the  State.  John  Leonard  Hedrick  was  a  farmer  on  a 
moderate  scale.  He  was  able  to  give  his  children  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  neighborhood  schools,  and  to  give  them 
enough  property  to  serve  for  a  start  in  life.  The  boy,  Ben- 
jamin, attended  the  neighborhood  schools,  and  fitted  for 
college  under  Rev.  Jesse  Rankin,  a  Presbyterian  minister  of 
Salisbury.  ^There  is  a  story,  told  and  reiterated  in  the  heat 
of  the  controversy  that  afterwards  arose,  that  his  father 
offered  him  the  choice  of  a  college  education  or  property 
enough  to  begin  life  on.  For  the  boy  there  could  be  no 
hesitation  in  a  case  like  this.  He  took  the  opportunity  to 
get  an  education...  In  1847  ne  entered  the  university  of  the 
State  at  Chapel  Hill,  and  in  1851  he  graduated  with  the 
highest  distinction.  His  mind  was  of  a  scientific  turn,  and 
he  made  fine  progress  in  chemistry  and  mathematics.  At 
this  time  Hon.  W.  A.  Graham,  Secretary  of  the  Navy, 
and  a  native  North  Carolinian,  asked  President  Swain,  of 
the  university,  to  recommend  a  young  man  to  be  appointed 
as  clerk  in  the  office  of  the  Nautical  Almanac.  President 
Swain  recommended  Mr.  Hedrick,  who  immediately  re- 
ceived the  appointment.  The  duties  of  this  office  seem  to 
have  been  at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  and  by  this  means  the 
young  graduate  was  able  to  take  advanced  instruction  in 
Harvard  College.  While  there  he  studied  chemistry  under 
the  great  Agassiz.  In  1852  he  was  married  to  Miss  Mary 
Ellen  Thompson,  daughter  of  William  Thompson,  of 
Orange  county,  North  Carolina.  In  1854  he  was  recalled 
to  his  Alma  Mater  to  take  the  Chair  of  Analytical  and  Agri- 
cultural Chemistry.  This  position  he  held  until  October, 
1856,  when  he  was  expelled  from  the  faculty  for  causes  con- 
nected with  his  views  on  slavery. 

It  is  not  hard  to  trace  the  development  of  Professor  Hed- 
rick's  views  on  slavery.  His  birth  and  his  early  surround- 
ings had  put  him  in  sympathy  with  that  large  number  of 


291]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick.  31 

small  farmers  in  the  western  part  of  the  State,  who,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  were  generally  opposed  to  slavery.  His 
boyhood  home  was  near  Lock's  Bridge,  on  the  Yadkin 
river,  and  on  the  road  that  led  through  that  part  of  the  State 
from  Virginia  to  South  Carolina.  He  declared  that  he  had 
seen  on  this  road  as  many  as  two  thousand  slaves  in  one  day 
going  to  the  south,  and  most  of  them  in  the  hands  of  specu- 
lators. This  seems  to  have  made  a  deep  impression  on  his 
sensitive  nature.  In  later  life  he  became  convinced  that  it 
was  a  very  harmful  taking  away  of  property  which  ought  to 
be  left  in  the  State  to  develop  it.  The  people  around  him 
had  great  cause  to  complain  of  slavery.  They  were  mostly 
workers  themselves,  and  felt  all  the  hardships  that  free  labor 
must  suffer  in  competition  with  slave  labor.  Many  of  them, 
through  this  very  reason,  had  been  driven  from  the  State. 
"Of  my  neighbors,  friends  and  kindred,"  said  Professor 
Hedrick  in  his  defence,  "nearly  one-half  have  left  the  State 
since  I  was  old  enough  to  remember.  Many  is  the  time  I 
have  stood  by  the  loaded  emigrant  wagon  and  given  the 
parting  hand  to  those  whose  faces  I  was  never  to  look  upon 
again.  They  were  going  to  seek  homes  in  the  free  West, 
knowing,  as  they  did,  that  free  and  slave  labor  could  not 
both  exist  and  prosper  in  the  same  community."  This 
statement  he  supported  by  showing  that  in  1850,  according 
to  De  Bow's  census,  which  ought  to  be  good  Southern 
authority,  there  were  in  Indiana  alone  33,000  native  North 
Carolinians,  while  in  all  the  free  West  there  were  58,000. 
This  was  enough  to  make  an  Abolitionist  out  of  a  less  re- 
sponsive nature  than  Professor  Hedrick's.  These  facts  had 
an  early  influence  on  him.  His  stay  in  the  North  only  con- 
firmed this  conclusion.  It  was  easy  enough  for  a  young 
man  of  the  planter  class,  used  to  the  luxury  of  his  Southern 
home,  to  spend  some  time  in  the  North  without  becoming 
convinced  that  in  general  social  welfare  the  North  was  ahead 
of  the  South.  It  was  far  easier  for  a  young  man  of  the 
middle  class,  used  to  the  hardships  and  limitations  of  the 


32  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [292 

free  labor  of  the  South,  to  go  to  the  North  and  come  to  an 
entirely  opposite  conclusion ;  and  it  was  not  a  very  remote 
mental  process  to  conclude,  further,  that  this  difference  was 
due  to  slavery.  Young  Hedrick  was  sprung  from  the  mid- 
dle class  of  farmers,  and  his  mind  naturally  went  through 
the  process  that  has  been  indicated. 

All  accounts  of  Professor  Hedrick  agree  that  he  was  a 
man  of  singular  gentleness  of  character.  In  a  private  letter 
to  the  writer,  Mr.  Hinton  R.  Helper,  who  knew  Professor 
Hedrick  well,  says:  L"With  all  his  virtues,  and  he  was  full 
of  them,  modesty,  amounting  almost  to  bashfulness,  was 
one  of  his  peculiar  characteristics."  -  Such  a  man  was  not 
likely  to  create  strife  deliberately.  Honest,  gentle,  intelli- 
gent, he  was,  it  is  but  fair  to  think,  more  competent  to  know 
the  right  thing  to  do  in  the  position  in  which  he  was  placed 
than  we  whom  a  wide  interval  of  time  and  interests  has  re- 
moved from  him.  Let  us  assume  in  what  shall  follow  that 
he  acted  as  properly  as  one  might  expect  from  a  man  of 
such  a  character. 

In  August,  1856,  there  was  an  election  of  State  officers  in 
North  Carolina.  Professor  Hedrick  went  to  the  polls  in  the 
village  of  Chapel  Hill,  in  which  the  university  is  located, 
and  voted  for  the  Democratic  candidates.  A  bystander 
asked  him  if  he  intended  to  vote  the  same  ticket  in  the 
national  election  in  November  following.  It  is  likely  that 
his  views  on  slavery  were  known,  and  that  this  question  was 
asked  to  make  him  commit  himself  in  public.  He  replied 
that  he  did  not  know.  He  was  then  asked  if  he  would  vote 
the  Whig  ticket,  and  he  answered  in  the  negative.  Finally 
he  was  asked  if  he  would  vote  for  Fremont.  To  this  he 
answered  very  frankly  that  he  would  so  vote  if  a  Republican 
electoral  ticket  should  be  formed  in  the  State.  There  was 
no  attempt  to  conceal  his  intention,  and  it  at  once  became 
known  among  both  students  and  villagers.  Mr.  Helper,  in 
the  letter  already  quoted,  says  that  time  and  time  again  Pro- 
fessor Hedrick  assured  him  that  he  never  once -sought  to 


293]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick.  33 

disseminate  his  views  among  the  students  or  other  persons 
around  the  place. 

This  was  in  August.  No  active  opposition  seems  to  have 
been  made  to  these  views  by  those  closely  associated  with 
him  who  held  them.  In  the  North  Carolina  Standard, 
Raleigh,  N.  C,  the  leading  Democratic  newspaper  of  the 
State,  there  appeared  on  September  13,  1856,  a  short  article 
under  the  title,  "Fremont  in  the  South,"  the  concluding  par- 
agraph of  which  declared:  "If  there  be  Fremont  men 
among  us,  let  them  be  silenced  or  required  to  leave.  The 
expression  of  black  Republican  opinions  in  our  midst  is  incom-  . " 
patible  with  our  honor  and  safety  as  a  people.  If  at  all  neces- 
sary, we  shall  refer  to  this  matter  again.  Let  our  schools 
and  seminaries  of  learning  be  scrutinized ;  and  if  black  Re- 
publicans be  found  in  them,  let  them  be  driven  out.  That 
man  is  neither  a  fit  nor  a  safe  instructor  of  our  young  men 
who  even  inclines  to  Fremont  and  black  Republicanism." 
The  editor  of  the  Standard,  Mr.  W.  W.  Holden,  was  a  man 
of  strong  editorial  ability.  He  is  said  to  have  boasted  that 
in  North  Carolina  affairs  he  could  kill  and  make  alive.  It 
seems  to  have  been  in  some  such  spirit  as  this  that  he  now 
turned  his  guns  on  the  Abolitionist  in  the  university  faculty. 
It  was  undoubtedly  his  deliberate  purpose  to  drive  Professor 
Hedrick  from  his  position.  Two  weeks  after  the  appear- 
ance of  the  article  just  quoted,  the  Standard  contained  a 
communication,  signed  "An  Alumnus,"  which  brought  up 
the  subject  in  a  more  direct  manner.  The  writer  began  by 
calling  attention  to  the  danger  of  sending  Southern  youths 
to  Northern  colleges,  where  they  would  be  taught  "black 
Republicanism,"  and  then  shifted  to  the  article  in  the  issue 
of  September  13,  just  mentioned.  He  goes  on  to  say:  "We 
have  been  reliably  informed  that  a  professor  in  our  State 
university  is  an  open  and  avowed  supporter  of  Fremont, 
and  declares  his  willingness,  nay,  his  desire,  to  support  a 
black  Republican  ticket,  and  a  want  of  a  Fremont  electoral 
ticket  in  North  Carolina  is  the  only  barrier  to  this  Southern 


34  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [294 

professor  from  carrying  out  his  patriotic  wishes.  Is  he  a  fit 
or  safe  instructor  fcr  our  young  men?"  This  professor,  says 
Alumnus,  ought  to  be  dismissed  from  his  position,  and  if 
the  faculty  and  trustees  have  no  power  to  dismiss  him,  the 
legislature  at  its  approaching  session  ought  to  take  up  the 
matter.  With  feelings  highly  outraged,  he  asks :  "Upon 
what  ground  can  a  Southern  instructor,  relying  for  his  sup- 
port upon  Southern  money,  selected  to  impart  healthy  in- 
struction to  the  sons  of  Southern  slave-owners,  and  in- 
debted for  his  situation  to  a  Southern  State,  excuse  his  sup- 
port of  Fremont  with  a  platform  which  eschews  the  fathers 
of  his  pupils  and  the  State  from  whose  university  he  received 
his  station?" 

All  this  was  plainly  aimed  at  Professor  Hedrick.  He 
consulted  his  friends  as  to  what  he  should  do.  He  was  ad- 
vised to  say  nothing,  since  any  defence  he  should  make 
would  not  be  believed.  One  of  his  colleagues  made  a  visit 
to  Hillsborough  about  that  time,  and  came  back  with  the 
information  that  the  articles  in  the  Standard  had  made  a 
deep  impression  on  the  inhabitants  of  that  town.  Several 
of  the  trustees  were  said  to  be  denouncing  Professor  Hed- 
rick as  an  "Abolitionist,"  which  he  was,  and  as  "a  stirrer  up 
of  the  poor  against  the  rich,"  which  he  certainly  was  not. 
The  accused  remained  silent  no  longer.  He  wrote  a  de- 
fence of  his  position,  which  was  published  in  the  Standard 
of  October  4,  1856.  Had  he  been  playing  a  game  with  his 
enemies  this  would  have  been  a  bad  play.  It  gave  them  an 
opportunity  of  bringing  a  definite  charge  against  him.  Had 
he  kept  silent,  the  burden  of  proof  would  have  remained  on 
them.  Moreover,  it  gave  them  an  opportunity  of  avoiding 
the  real  issue,  and  of  proceeding  against  him  for  taking  part 
as  a  professor  in  the  university  in  partisan  politics ;  although 
it  must  be  confessed  that  it  was  in  the  slightest  sense  partisan 
to  express  a  preference  for  a  party  that  was  not  organized 
or  likely  to  be  organized  in  the  State  in  which  he  must  vote. 
On  the  other  hand,  Professor  Hedrick  had  his  rights. 
He  was  a  self-directing  and  a  self-accounting  citizen,  and  it 


295]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hcdrick.  35 

was  perfectly  right  for  him  to  express  his  opinion  on  a  public 
question  about  which  he  was  being  abused  in  the  public 
prints.  Regardless  of  the  question  of  expediency,  his  course 
was  ingenuous  and  manly.  In  the  light  of  present  knowl- 
edge, the  South  knows  that  he  spoke  the  truth,  and  one 
ought  not  to  criticise  a  man  for  speaking  the  truth,  espe- 
cially if  he  be  an  instructor  in  an  institution  of  learning, 
which  ought  at  all  times  to  be  a  leader  of  truth. 

Professor  Hedrick's  statement  was  made  in  a  spirit  of 
fairness,  and  with  far  less  temper  than  either  the  editor  or 
"An  Alumnus"  had  shown.  Owning  readily  that  he  was  the 
man  aimed  at  in  the  Standard,  he  avowed  with  frankness 
that  he  preferred  Fremont  for  President,  and  gave  two  rea- 
sons— (i)  because  he  liked  the  man,  and  (2)  because  Fre- 
mont was  on  the  right  side  of  the  slavery  question.  Dis- 
cussing the  latter  reason,  he  branched  out  into  an  argument 
against  slavery,  perhaps  the  only  anti-slavery  argument  ever 
admitted  to  the  columns  of  the  Standard.  This  feature 
made  five-sixths  of  his  article.  He  cited  the  views  of 
Washington,  Jefferson,  Henry,  Madison  and  Randolph  on 
slavery.  The  works  of  these  statesmen  were  much  read  in 
the  library  of  the  university.  Hejsaid  that  in  the  western 
part  of  the  State  popular  sentiment  was  against  slavery,  and 
that  a  large  number  of  people  had  gone  from  there  to  the 
West.  He  made  the  point  that  the  continual  taking  away 
of  slaves  for  the  far  South  cut  off  a  great  deal  of  the  labor 
of  the  State  that  ought  to  be  left  to  develop  it.  He  de- 
clared that  he  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  politics  of  the 
students,  adding:  "They  would  not  have  known  my  own] 
predilections  in  the  present  contest  had  not  one  of  the  num-  ] 
ber  asked  me  which  candidate  I  preferred."  Of  "An  Alum- 
nus" he  said :  "I  shall  not  attempt  to  abridge  his  liberty  in 
the  least,  but  my  own  opinion  I  will  have,  whether  he  is  will- 
ing to  grant  me  that  right  of  every  freeman  or  not.  I  be- 
lieve I  have  had  quite  as  good  an  opportunity  as  he  has  to 
form  an  opinion  on  the  question  now  to  be  settled.  And 
when  'Alumnus'  talks  of  'driving  me  out'  for  sentiments 
3 


36  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [296 

once  held  by  [Washington  and  Jefferson]  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  he  is  becoming  rather  fanatical."  He  closed 
by  saying:  "I  do  not  claim  infallibility  for  my  opinions. 
Wiser  and  better  men  than  I  have  been  mistaken.  But 
holding,  as  I  do,  the  doctrines  once  advocated  by  Washing- 
ton and  Jefferson,  I  think  I  should  be  met  by  arguments, 
and  not  by  denunciation." 

Having  tormented  its  victim  until  he  had  forced  him  into 
a  position  of  public  condemnation,  the  editor  of  the  Standard 
now  proceeded  to  destroy  him  in  the  most  systematic  man- 
ner. In  an  editorial  in  the  same  issue  with  Professor  Hed- 
rick's  defence  it  was  declared  that  it  could  not  be  expected 
of  "  'An  Alumnus'  or  any  other  citizen  of  this  State  to  argue 
with  a  black  Republican."  The  editor  repeated  that  a  man 
who  "even  inclines  to  Fremont  and  black  Republicanism" 
is  not  fit  to  be  an  instructor  in  the  university.  He  added : 
"This  is  a  matter,  however,  for  the  trustees  of  the  univer- 
sity. We  take  it  for  granted  that  Professor  Hedrick  will 
be  promptly  removed."1  A  week  later  "A  Trustee  of  the 
University"  took  up  the  matter  in  the  same  paper,  saying : 
"This  sentiment,  avowed  by  one  of  the  professors,  will  sink 
the  institution,  now  grown  to  giant  size  and  still  increasing, 
unless  the  trustees  forthwith  expel  that  traitor  to  all  South- 
ern interests  from  the  seat  he  now  so  unworthily  fills.  He 
should  be  ordered  away  as  a  foul  stain  on  the  escutcheon  of 
the  university  to  show  to  the  country  that  the  institution  is 
a  sanctuary  from  such  vile  pollution."  A  correspondent 
from  Norfolk,  Va.,  wrote  also  in  the  same  strain. 

Before  these  two  letters  were  written  the  university  fac- 
ulty had  considered  the  case.  The  defence  had  appeared 
on  Saturday,  October  4.  The  paper  must  have  reached 
Chapel  Hill  not  sooner  than  Saturday  afternoon.  At  noon 
on  Monday  following  the  faculty  was  called  together  by 

1  This  editorial  and  Prof.  Hedrick's  defence  were  reprinted  in  the 
New  York  Tribune  (semi-weekly),  Oct.  17,  1856,  and  in  the  New 
York  Herald  (weekly),  Oct.  18,  1856,  and  possibly  elsewhere. 


297]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick.  37 

President  Swain,  all  the  members  being  present.  In  call- 
ing up  the  matter  the  president  said:  "In  an  institution 
sustained  like  this,  by  all  denominations  and  parties,  nothing 
should  be  permitted  to  be  done  calculated  to  disturb  the 
harmonious  intercourse  of  those  who  support  and  those 
who  direct  and  govern  it.  And  this  is  well  known  to  have 
been  the  policy  and  practice  during  a  long  series  of  years.":1 
The  communication  of  President  Swain  was  referred  to  a 
committee  consisting  of  Professors  Mitchell,  Phillips  and 
Hubbard.     These  reported  as  follows : 

' '  Resolved : 

«'l.  That  the  course  pursued  by  Professor  Hedrick,  set 
forth  in  his  publication  in  the  North  Carolina  Standard  of 
the  4th  inst.,  is  not  warranted  by  our  usages,  and  that  the 
political  opinions  expressed  are  not  those  entertained  by 
another  member  of  this  body. 

"2.  That  while  we  feel  bound  to  declare  our  sentiments 
freely  upon  this  occasion,  we  entertain  none  other  than  feel- 
ings of  personal  kindness  and  respect  for  the  subject  of 
them,  and  sincerely  regret  the  indiscretion  into  which  he 
seems  in  this  instance  to  have  fallen." 

After  a  brief  discussion  the  resolutions  were  adopted, 
Messrs.  Mitchell,  Phillips,  Fetter,  Hubbard,  Wheat,  Phipp, 
C.  Phillips,  Brown,  Pool,  Lucas,  Battle  and  Wetmore  voting 
in  the  affirmative.  Mr.  Harrisse  voted  in  the  negative, 
"simply  on  the  ground  that  the  faculty  is  neither  charged 
with  black  Republicanism  nor  likely  to  be  suspected  of  it." 
He  considered  the  whole  affair  as  personal  to  Professor 
Hedrick.  The  students  of  the  university  expressed  their 
sentiments  by  assembling  on  the  campus  as  soon  as  the 
Standard  containing  the  defence  was  received,  and  by  burn- 
ing the  professor  in  effigy  to  the  tolling  of  the  bell. 

On  October  11,  the  executive  committee  of  the  board  of 
trustees  of  the  university  met  in  Raleigh,  Governor  Bragg 
presiding,  the  sole  purpose  being,  apparently,  to  dispose  of 

1  North  Carolina  Standard,  Oct.  15,  1856. 


38  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [298 

this  matter.  From  the  minutes  of  the  meeting  I  take  the 
following : 

"The  president  laid  before  the  committee  a  political  essay 
by  Professor  Hedrick,  published  in  the  North  Carolina 
Standard  of  the  4th  inst.,  together  with  sundry  letters  and 
papers  relating  thereto.     Whereupon, 

"Resolved,  That  the  executive  committee  has  seen,  with 
great  regret,  the  publication  of  Professor  Hedrick  in  the 
Standard  of  the  4th  inst.,  because  it  violates  the  established 
usage  of  the  university,  which  forbids  any  professor  to  be- 
come an  agitator  in  the  exciting  politics  of  the  day,  and  is 
well  calculated  to  injure  the  prosperity  and  usefulness  of  the 
institution. 

"Resolved,  That  the  prompt  action  of  the  faculty  of  the 
university  on  the  6th  inst.  meets  with  the  cordial  approba- 
tion of  this  committee. 

"Resolved,  That  in  the  opinion  of  the  committee,  Mr. 
Hedrick  has  greatly  if  not  entirely  destroyed  his  power  to  be 
of  further  benefit  to  the  university  in  the  office  which  he  now 
fills." 

These  resolutions  were  passed  unanimously. 

While  the  specific  words  were  not  used,  this  was  in  reality 
a  dismissal.  The  next  issue  of  the  Standard  announced, 
"with  much  gratification,"  the  removal  of  Professor  Hed- 
rick. Referring  to  his  probable  course  in  the  future,  the 
paper  further  said :  "If  the  Abolitionists  should  take  him 
up  the  history  of  his  conduct  will  follow  him,  and  they  will 
know,  as  he  will  feel,  that  they  have  received  into  their 
bosom  a  dangerous  but  congenial  and  ungrateful  thing." 
This  was  a  bitter  thrust  at  a  defeated  antagonist.  It  is 
worth  noting,  because  it  says  not  one  syllable  about  the 
offence  of  writing  a  political  letter.  The  Standard  a  week 
later  took  up  the  matter  again,  and  laid  down  its  general 
doctrine  as  follows :  "We  say  now,  after  due  consideration, 
but  with  no  purpose  to  make  any  special  application  of  the 
remark,  that  no  man  who  is  avowedly  for  John  C.  Fremont 
for  President  ought  to  be  allowed  to  breathe  the  air  or  tread 
the  soil  of  North  Carolina." 


299]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick.  39 

The  cause  assigned  for  the  dismissal  of  Professor  Hed- 
rick became  afterwards  a  matter  of  dispute.  The  Wilming- 
ton Commercial  said  at  the  time,  in  reference  to  the  action 
of  the  executive  committee:  "It  was  not  extra-judicial,  as 
some  persons  suppose.  Some  years  ago,  on  account  of  the 
introduction  of  certain  political  influences  into  the  univer- 
sity, the  trustees  established  a  standing  rule  that  neither  pro- 
fessors nor  scholars  should  engage  in  political  conflicts.  It 
was  under  this  rule  that  Mr.  Hedrick  was  dismissed,  in  con- 
sequence of  his  perseverance  in  wrong-doing,  after  being 
duly  admonished  that  he  was  violating  a  law  of  the  institu- 
tion. The  wisdom  of  this  regulation  will  be  quite  apparent 
to  every  reflecting  mind."1  As  to  when  Professor  Hedrick 
had  been  "duly  admonished,"  or  in  what  sense  he  had  been 
guilty  of  "perseverance  in  wrong-doing,"  does  not  appear 
from  any  evidence  obtainable.  On  the  contrary,  Mr.  Helper 
says  that  Professor  Hedrick  said  time  and  time  again  that  he 
never  once  tried  to  convert  a  student  to  his  views.  The 
above  utterance  does  not  seem  to  have  been  seen  by  Profes- 
sor Hedrick  until  his  return  to  the  State  in  the  following 
January.  Then  he  sent  the  Wilmington  Commercial  a  com- 
plete statement,  which  is  worthy  of  extensive  quotation. 
He  said,  after  quoting  the  charge  above  mentioned: 

"Now  all  this  about  the  trustees  having  established  any 
such  a  rule  as  the  one  referred  to  above  is  a  pure  fabrica- 
tion. No  such  rule  exists,  and,  of  course,  I  could  not  vio- 
late it  or  be  'duly  admonished'  in  regard  to  it.  But  you  say 
I  persevered  in  wrong-doing  after  I  was  duly  admonished 
that  I  was  violating  a  law  of  the  institution.  This  is  utterly 
false.  I  was  assailed  in  two  different  issues  of  the  Standard. 
I  was  charged  with  being  a  dangerous  member  of  the  com- 
munity, and  the  editor  called  upon  the  mob  to  drive  me 
from  the  State  as  an  outlaw.  Under  these  circumstances,  I 
wrote  my  defence,  declaring  that  I  held  no  opinions  inim- 
ical to  the  peace  and  welfare  of  the  State,  that  in  oppos- 

1  Reprinted  in  the  Hillsboro  Recorder,  Nov.  12,  1856. 


40  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of North  Carolina.  [300 

ing  the  extension  of  slavery  I  was  but  holding  the  doctrines 
of  the  best  and  greatest  of  Southern  men  that  have  lived. 
The  publication  of  this  defence  is  the  sum  and  substance  of 
my  offending.  The  editor  of  the  Standard  said,  without 
waiting  for  the  action  of  the  committee,  that  he  took  it  for 
granted  that  I  would  be  removed.  Several  of  the  trustees, 
since  reading  my  defence  and  the  assaults  of  the  Standard, 
have  assured  me  that  I  acted  just  as  a  high-minded  and  hon- 
orable man  should  have  acted  under  the  circumstances. 

"The  trustees  have  never  been  able  to  assign  any  reason 
for  my  dismissal,  except  that  Holden  and  the  mobocracy 
required  it,  and  Holden  and  the  mobocracy  must  be  obeyed 
or  the  stars  might  fall,  or  some  other  equally  great  calamity 
happen  to  the  State. 

"But  some  will  say  that  I  violated  a  usage  of  the  faculty 
in  defending  myself  against  the  attack  of  the  Standard, 
That  is  as  false  as  the  charge  of  violating  a  law  of  the  insti- 
tution. It  is  true  the  faculty  have  always  refrained  from 
taking  any  prominent  part  in  the  politics  of  the  day.  But 
they  have  always  expressed  their  party  preferences  as  freely 
as  other  citizens,  who  do  not  make  a  trade  of  politics,  and 
when  necessary  have  resorted  to  the  press  to  give  publicity 
to  their  opinions  on  this  same  vexed  slavery  question.  The 
same  'usage'  exists  in  regard  to  the  judges.  But  during  the 
late  contest  Judge  Saunders,  before  I  wrote  my  'defence,' 
addressed  a  letter  to  his  political  friends  in  Baltimore,  which 
was  designed  to  influence  the  election,  and  it  was  largely 
circulated  by  the  party  presses  in  the  State.  No  one,  how- 
ever, thought  of  dismissing  Judge  Saunders  for  his  breach 
of  'usage.'  And  as  he  was  one  of  the  executive  committee 
of  the  board  of  trustees,  of  course  he  had  too  much  regard 
for  consistency  to  vote  for  dismissing  me  for  doing  no  more 
than  he  did  himself. 

"The  following  sentence  from  an  editorial  in  the  Standard 
explains  the  whole  matter.  The  editor  says :  'Our  object 
was  to  rid  the  State  and  the  university  of  an  avowed  Fre- 
mont man,  and  we  have  succeeded.'     This  explains  the  ac- 


301]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick.  41 

tion  of  the  board,  and  there  is  no  need  to  resort  to  'rules' 
which  never  existed,  or  to  usages  which  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  matter. 

"The  act  establishing  the  university  says  that  the  board 
of  trustees  may  remove  a  professor  for  misbehavior,  in- 
ability or  neglect  of  duty,  and  they  shall  have  power  to  make 
all  such  laws  and  regulations  for  the  government  of  the 
university  and  preservation  of  order  and  good  morals 
therein,  as  are  usually  made  in  such  seminaries,  and  as  to 
them  may  appear  necessary ;  provided,  the  same  are  not  con- 
trary to  the  inalienable  liberty  of  a  citizen  and  the  laws  of  a 
State.1 

"If  it  is  a  misbehavior  to  defend  oneself  against  the  de- 
nunciations of  a  fanatical  party  paper,  then  the  trustees 
have  dismissed  me  with  a  show  of  reason.  The  'inalienable 
liberty  of  a  citizen'  is  little  worth  if  it  be  to  cost  one  the 
labor  of  years  to  claim  a  voice  in  the  election  of  a  President, 
and  when  accused  of  holding  opinions  dangerous  to  the 
community,  not  to  be  permitted  to  say  to  the  slanderer  that 
the  charge  is  false.  My  defence  has  not  been  reprinted  in 
a  single  paper  in  the  State;  and  yet,  in  order  to  drive  me 
from  my  home  and  kindred,  it  has  everywhere  been  pub- 
lished that  I  was  an  Abolitionist  and  the  mob  excited 
against  me.  I  have  asked  that  my  letter  be  published  to 
speak  for  itself  and  me,  but  in  every  instance  the  editors 
have  refused  me  even  that,  whilst  at  the  same  time  many 
have  not  hesitated  to  circulate  every  paragraph  that  could 
work  against  me. 

"The  papers  which  have  in  any  way  given  currency  to 
the  notice  that  I  was  dismissed  for  violating  any  law  of  the 
university  or  the  State,  will,  I  hope,  do  me  the  justice  to 
publish  this  note." 

To  this  plain  argument  the  Commercial  of  February  5, 
1857,  the  same  issue  in  which  the  above  communication  ap- 
peared, replied  editorially : 

1  See  Laws  of  1789,  Chap.  20,  section  8. 


42  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [302 

"In  another  column  is  a  communication  from  Professor 
Hedrick,  containing  animadversions  oh  the  course  of  Mr. 
Holden,  of  the  Standard,  and  the  party  to  which  he  belongs. 
In  regard  to  the  'established  rule/  we  do  not  recollect  now 
who  was  our  authority  for  it,  but  we  well  remember  that  we 
considered  it  reliable,  certainly  as  miKh  so  as  any  statement 
made  by  Mr.  Hedrick  can  be. 

"Mr.  Hedrick  is  hardly  entitled  to  the  :ourtesy  we  show 
him,  for,  by  using  the  term  'Holden  and  Mobocracy,'  he 
offers  an  insult  to  the  great  and  powerful  and  patriotic  party 
with  which  we  have  the  honor  to  act.  However,  we  let  that 
pass,  for  our  readers  will  have  a  great  opportunity  of  ob- 
serving the  great  advantages  of  collegiate  attainments  and 
station  in  the  charming  style  in  which  the  professor  turns  up 
the  'pure  Saxon.'  Young  man,  too,  we  believe.  Quite 
smart  for  his  age,  certainly.  Very  bad,  indeed,  that  the 
youth  of  our  university  must  lose  the  benefits  of  his  fine 
examples  and  specimens  of  Addisonian  purity  and  style  of 
elegance  and  diction.  Was  he  somewhat  in  a  passion  when 
he  wrote  the  words  false,  falsehood,  etc?  Well !  We  won- 
der !  His  language  being  so  strong,  so  argumentative,  so 
convincing,  we  dare  say  his  gesticulations  would  be  mag- 
nificent. We  trust  that  the  faculty  will  permit  Mr.  Hedrick 
to  recite  the  communication  we  publish  to  the  scholars,  so 
that  they  may  lose  nothing  of  its  beauties,  either  as  regards 
its  sentiments  or  the  lessons  that  may  be  derived  from  ac- 
tion. Action  is  everything  according  to  the  notion  of  De- 
mosthenes— 'action,  action,  action,'  was  his  motto.  Let 
somebody  see  Mr.  Hedrick  act  the  thing." 

Here  are  two  articles,  each  of  which  may  be  left  to  speak 
for  the  merits  of  the  side  it  advocates.  On  the  one  side  we 
have  a  clear,  strong  argument,  unanswerable,  a  sense  of 
outrage,  a  protest  against  passion ;  on  the  other  we  have 
an  avoidance  of  argument  in  the  beginning,  a  ruthless 
unwillingness  to  concede  a  desire  for  truth  to  the  other 
side,  an  appeal  to  passion,  and  a  supercilious  tone  of  super- 
iority.    It  was  a  great  misfortune  for  the  South  that  the 


803]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick.  43 

defence  of  slavery  should  have  committed  it  so  decidedly 
to  habits  of  denunciation  and  intolerance.  It  was  the  em- 
bittering of  tempers  naturally  sweet,  to  which  only  years 
can  bring  back  their  gentleness. 

On  October  21,  1856,  there  was  an  educational  conven- 
tion in  Salisbury,  which,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  near 
Professor  Hedrick's  boyhood  home.  Before  the  recent 
trouble  Professor  Hedrick  had  been  appointed  a  delegate  to 
this  convention,  and  now  he  decided  to  attend.  One  object 
in  going  was  to  learn  what  was  the  opinion  of  the  people  in 
that  part  of  the  State  in  regard  to  his  case.  In  Salisbury 
he  stopped  at  the  house  of  Rev.  Jesse  Rankin,  who  had  pre- 
pared him  for  college,  and  who  was  then  conducting  a 
girls'  boarding  school  in  that  place.  In  the  evening  he  went 
to  the  Presbyterian  Church,  where  the  sessions  of  the  con- 
vention were  held.  He  took  a  seat  in  the  gallery,  and  seeing 
his  father  in  another  part  of  the  gallery,  he  went  over  and 
sat  beside  him.  This  helped  to  attract  attention  to  his  pres- 
ence. It  was  soon  generally  known  that  he  was  in  the  build- 
ing. A  crowd  began  to  collect  outside,  shouting  his  name 
and  in  various  ways  evincing  an  ugly  disposition.  Their 
object,  said  the  town  paper,  was  to  disgrace  him  and  to  force 
him  to  leave  the  place.  This  made  him  the  object  of  the 
gaze  of  a  large  part  of  the  audience.  Some  called  him 
"Fremont"  in  derision.  The  children,  misunderstanding 
the  allusion,  thought  he  was  Fremont,  and  looked  on  with 
wonder  and  dread.  One  of  them  remarked  in  his  hearing 
that  he  "was  a  dreadful  little  man  to  be  President."  Pro- 
fessor Hedrick  was  embarrassed,  and  drew  his  cloak  around 
his  face.  When  the  convention  adjourned  he  started  out, 
accompanied  by  his  father  and  his  former  teacher.  Directly 
facing  the  door  he  saw  an  effigy  of  himself,  gotten  up  by 
some  of  the  young  men,  and  by  the  side  of  it  a  transparency, 
on  which  were  the  words :  "Hedrick,  leave,  or  take  tar  and 
feathers  !"  This  effigy  was  burned  in  the  presence  of  him- 
self and  nearly  every  other  member  of  the  convention.  The 
mob  gave  three  groans  for  the  object  of  their  displeasure, 


44  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [304 

who,  for  his  part,  accompanied  by  his  father  and  Mr.  Ran- 
kin, retired  to  his  lodgings.  The  passion  of  the  mob  was 
now  aroused.  They  could  not  forbear  to  torture  as  long  as 
their  victim  was  within  reach.  Between  200  and  300 
marched  to  the  boarding  school,  where  they  serenaded  the 
hated  Abolitionist  in  true  "Calathumpian  style,"  as  the 
Raleigh  Standard  pronounced  it.  They  shouted,  hissed, 
gave  three  groans  and  demanded  that  he  leave  town  or  take 
an  application  of  "the  juice  of  the  pine  and  the  hair  of  the 
goose."  They  even  threatened  to  enter  the  house  and  do 
him  personal  violence.  In  the  words  of  the  local  paper, 
they  "proceeded  in  a  most  riotous  and  reprehensive  manner 
to  compel  Hedrick  to  leave  town."  Finally  the  mob  was 
quieted  by  several  prominent  citizens,  who  do  not  seem,  be- 
fore this,  to  have  exerted  themselves  in  the  matter.  The 
crowd  went  to  their  homes,  Professor  Hedrick  agreeing  to 
leave  before  daylight.  Commenting  on  this  occurrence,  the 
Salisbury  Banner  said :  "We  regret  this  unfortunate  occur- 
rence as  well  as  every  lover  of  quiet,  yet  it  was  a  certain 
demonstration  that  black  Republicans  and  their  infamous 
principles  cannot  and  will  not  be  tolerated  in  this  goodly 
land  of  ours.  We  admire  the  spirit,  but  regret  the  neces- 
sity of  the  manner  in  which  the  condemnation  was  made."1 
Early  next  morning  the  young  man,  hunted  from  the 
scenes  of  his  boyhood  like  a  criminal,  took  his  way  to  the 
house  of  his  brother,  who  lived  near  the  railroad  station  of 
Lexington.  To  the  latter  place  he  at  length  went  with  his 
father  to  take  the  train  for  his  home  in  Chapel 
Hill.  Fearing  trouble,  the  two  separated.  The  pre- 
caution was  well  taken.  An  excited  crowd  had 
gathered,  and  suspecting  that  Professor  Hedrick  might 
be    on    board,    they    searched    the    cars    for    him.       By 

1  The  story  as  given  in  The  Salisbury  Republican  Banner,  Oct 
28,  1856,  was  reprinted  in  the  Boston  Traveller,  Nov.  6,  1856.  A 
slightly  varying  account  is  that  of  the  Raleigh  Standard,  Nov.  6, 
1856.  From  these  two  narratives  as  well  as  from  facts  furnished  by 
Prof.  Hedrick's  family  the  above  has  been  reproduced. 


305]  Benjamin  Sherwood  Hedrick.  45 

getting  on  the  train  at  the  last  moment  he  was  able  to 
elude  his  pursuers,  and  to  reach  his  home  in  safety.  A  few 
days  later  he  left  the  State  for  the  North.  It  was  reported 
at  the  time  that  a  meeting  to  express  approval  of  the  action 
of  the  university  authorities  was  planned  in  Hillsborough, 
but  that  its  promoters  gave  it  up  for  fear  that  it  might  be 
turned  against  them  and  made  to  express  approval  of  Pro- 
fessor Hedrick. 

In  January,  1857,  tne  fugitive  returned  to  the  State.  The 
excitement  of  the  campaign  had  subsided,  and  there  was  no 
further  political  gain  in  persecuting  him.  He  was  allowed 
to  come  and  go  in  peace.  It  was  at  this  time  that  he  wrote 
his  statement  for  the  Wilmington  Commercial.  It  was  also 
at  this  time  that  the  following,  which  I  find  among  his 
papers,  was  written: 

University  of  North  Carolina, 

Chapel  Hill,  N.  C,  February  2,  1857. 

The  proceedings  of  the  faculty  in  the  foregoing  case  were 
dictated  by  the  sense  of  duty ;  and  subsequent  reflection  has 
produced  no  change  of  opinion  as  to  the  course  pursued. 
We  regret  most  sincerely  that  a  departure  from  the  usages 
of  the  institution  rendered  [necessary]  any  action  on  our 
part. 

We  repeat  now,  what  we  said  then,  that  we  entertain  for 
Professor  Hedrick  none  other  than  feelings  of  kindness  and 
respect ;  and  we  cheerfully  add  our  decided  testimony  to  his 
high  natural  abilities  and  scholarly  attainments.  We  be- 
lieve that  in  these  respects,  especially  as  a  mathematician 
and  analytical  chemist,  he  has  few  superiors  of  his  age. 
(Signed),     D.  L.  SWAIN,  Pres., 

E.  MITCHELL,  Chem.  Prof., 

F.  M.  HUBBARD,  Lat.  Prof., 

J.  T.  WHEAT,  Logic  and  Rhet.  Prof. 

What  could  have  been  the  occasion  for  this  paper  I  am 
unable  to  learn.     It  is  possible  that  friends  of  Professor 


46  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [306 

Hedrick  had  asked  for  a  modification  of  the  former  action 
of  the  faculty.  It  cannot  have  been  meant  for  a  letter  of 
recommendation,  for  five  days  later  these  same  professors, 
with  one  other,  signed  such  a  letter  in  regular  form,  in 
which  they  spoke  most  flatteringly  of  their  former  colleague 
as  a  man  and  as  a  scholar. 

From  North  Carolina  Professor  Hedrick  went  to  New 
York.  Here  he  was  employed  as  a  clerk  in  the  Mayor's 
office,  at  the  same  time  lecturing  and  teaching  in  the  city. 
In  1861  he  gave  up  this  work  to  become  a  principal  exam- 
iner in  the  United  States  Patent  Office  in  the  Department 
of  Chemistry  and  Metallurgy,  where  he  remained  till  his 
death.  From  1872  till  1876  he  was  also  Professor  of  Chem- 
istry and  Toxicology  in  the  University  of  Georgetown. 
During  the  war  he  relieved  many  distressed  fugitives  and 
prisoners  from  North  Carolina.  This  was  a  work  in  which 
his  gentle  nature  took  great  delight.  After  the  war  he  was 
an  earnest  worker  for  the  restoration  of  civil  order  in  his 
native  State.  He  died  at  his  residence  in  Washington,  Sep- 
tember 2,  1886. 

Of  his  scientific  services  in  the  Patent  Office  this  is  not 
the  place  to  speak  at  length.  His  long  period  of  service  in- 
dicates that  his  work  was  entirely  satisfactory.  An  asso- 
ciate in  the  Patent  Office,  in  an  article  in  The  American 
Inventor  (Cincinnati,  Ohio,)  September,  1886,  speaks  of  this 
part  of  his  career.  From  this  article  a  few  facts  will  be 
taken.  When  he  came  to  take  charge  of  his  work,  Profes- 
sor Hedrick  saw  that  but  few  patents  were  issued,  and  the 
business  of  the  officials  seems  to  have  been  thought  to  be  to 
"head  off  inventors  and  kill  inventions.  *  *  *  There 
was  no  sort  of  sympathy  with  the  inventors,  and  but  small 
desire  to  aid  them  in  perfecting  and  obtaining  the  patents." 
This  he  thought  wrong.  He  adopted  a  more  liberal  policy 
in  his  own  department.  His  associates  were  shocked.  They 
thought  him  a  radical.  But  the  commissioner,  Mr.  Hollo- 
way,  was  broad-minded  and  fair,  and  Professor  Hedrick's 
"anti-slavery  record  was  so  pronounced  that  no  scorn  or  ill- 


307]  Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe.  47 

will  had  any  adverse  influence  on  him."  He  held  his  posi- 
tion, and  in  the  course  of  time  the  whole  office  came  to 
espouse  his  policy  in  reference  to  inventions.  It  was  due 
chiefly  to  this  movement  which  he  set  going  that  the  Patent 
Office  began  its  great  development  immediately  after  the 
war.  Many  of  the  patents  that  he  granted  were  hotly  con- 
tested, but  the  courts  almost  always  sustained  his  judgment. 
In  the  course  of  time  he  was  generally  recognized  as  one  of 
the  most  efficient,  if,  indeed,  not  the  most  efficient,  of  all  the 
men  in  the  office  in  which  he  served. 

Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe. 

Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe  was  born  in  Louisburg,  N.  C, 
May  28,  1 8 14.  His  ancestors  came  from  Virginia  to  North 
Carolina.  His  father  read  medicine,  but  never  practised  it. 
He  was  a  school  teacher,  although,  from  his  early  leaning 
toward  medicine,  he  continued  to  be  called  "Dr.  Goodloe." 
Not  far  back  in  the  family  there  was  a  fortunate  combina- 
tion of  English,  Welsh,  Danish  and  Huguenot  blood.  Mr. 
Goodloe's  mother  was  of  a  Welsh  family  named  Jones.  In 
neither  origin  nor  association  was  he  connected  with  the 
class  of  large  slaveholders.  In  his  youth  he  attended  the 
"old  field"  schools  of  the  place,  where  he  acquired  the  merest 
rudiments  of  knowledge.  Later  on  he  entered  the  Louis- 
burg Academy,  which  was  supported  by  the  prominent 
families  of  the  neighborhood,  and  had  the  reputation  of  be- 
ing among  the  best  schools  of  its  kind  in  the  State.  His 
progress  here  was  not  great,  however.  When  he  left  the 
school  he  could  boast  of  no  learning  beyond  the  English 
branches,  except  a  "smattering  of  Latin."  Later  in  life  he 
went  to  Tennessee,  and  there,  at  Mt.  Pleasant,  Maury 
county,  studied  mathematics,  with  good  results,  under  a 
Harvard  graduate  named  Blake.  When  still  a  boy  he  went 
to  Oxford,  N.C.,  and  entered  a  printing  establishment  there, 
his  purpose  being  to  learn  the  printer's  trade.  This  period 
of  his  life  he  recognizes  as  of  great  formative  value  in  his 


48  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [308 

mental  development.  Typesetting  taught  him,  as  he  him- 
self says,  "to  analyze  sentences  and  to  discard,  in  my  mind, 
superfluous  and  inappropriate  words.  Perhaps  the  slow 
process  of  putting  the  types  together  was  favorable  to  this 
result.  At  any  rate,  I  have  always  regarded  those  years 
thus  spent  as  not  the  least  advantageous  to  me  in  the  matter 
of  mental  training." 

After  two  years  and  one-half  of  apprenticeship,  Mr. 
Goodloe,  then  just  of  age,  tried  a  newspaper  venture  of  his 
own.  He  began  in  Oxford,  N.  C,  the  publication  of  The 
Examiner.  The  venture  was  ill-timed,  and  soon  ended  in 
disaster.  The  editor,  encumbered  with  debt  and  disgusted 
with  newspapers,  went,  after  some  wanderings  in  Tennes- 
see, back  to  Louisburg  to  read  law.  After  a  year's  study 
he  was  licensed  to  practise  in  the  county  courts,  and  a  year 
later,  in  January,  1842,  secured  permission  to  practise  in  all 
State  courts.  He  settled  in  Louisburg  and  waited  for  cases. 
For  nearly  two  years  he  waited,  but  with  little  success.  He 
had  no  aptitude  for  public  speaking,  and  did  not  succeed 
in  acquiring  the  facility  in  argument  which  is  necessary  in 
the  general  practice  of  country  courts.  Mr.  Priestly  H. 
Mangum,  a  brother  of  Senator  Mangum,  and  a  lawyer  of 
prominence,  saw  this  deficiency  in  the  young  man,  and  ad- 
vised him  that  it  might  be  overcome  by  running  for  some 
political  office.  The  necessity  of  defending  publicly  his 
position,  thought  Mr.  Mangum,  would  develop  fluency  of 
speech.  Franklin  county,  of  which  Louisburg  is  the  county 
seat,  was  at  that  time  overwhelmingly  Whig.  Mr.  Goodloe 
was  a  Whig.  His  most  intimate  friends  were  leading 
Whigs,  and  they  offered  to  put  him  in  nomination.  "But," 
says  Mr.  Goodloe,  "I  had  a  thorn  in  the  flesh,  which  re- 
strained me'.  I  had  a  profound  conviction  of  the  evils  of 
slavery,  moral  and  economical.  The  agitation  had  not  then 
reached  to  fever  heat,  but  it  was  rising,  and  it  began  to  be 
seen  that  the  interest  of  slavery  underlay  and  touched  every 
other  question.  I  should  have  been  called  upon  to  define 
my  views  on  the  subject,  which  I  could  not  have  done  with- 


309]  Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe.  49 

out  injury  to  the  Whig  cause,  to  my  friends,  and  to  myself." 
The  proferred  nomination  was  accordingly  declined.  This 
was  a  very  characteristic  action  of  the  man.  One  of  the 
most  prominent  traits  revealed  in  his  career  is  his  honesty. 
After  a  year  of  idleness  in  Louisburg  Mr.  Goodloe  went 
to  Tennessee,  hoping  to  find  fortune  more  favorable  there. 
This  was  not  his  first  trip  to  that  State.  In  1836,  just  after 
the  failure  of  The  Examiner,  he  turned  to  the  West.  In 
1836  he  volunteered  in  Maury  county,  Tennessee,  to  go  to 
fight  the  Indians.  The  forces  were  intended  to  fight  the 
Creeks,  in  Alabama;  but  before  the  command  to  which  he 
belonged  could  rendezvous  at  Fayetteville,  Tenn.,  the 
Creeks  had  surrendered.  The  volunteers  then  agreed  to  go 
to  Florida,  against  the  Seminoles.  They  went,  serving  six 
months  as  mounted  volunteers.  They  had  several  skir- 
mishes with  the  Indians.  They  were  at  length  mustered  out 
of  service  at  New  Orleans.  For  this  service  Mr.  Goodloe 
now  receives  a  "service  pension."  On  his  second  trip  to 
Tennessee  he  found  that  there  was  as  little  of  an  opening 
there  for  a  man  who  was  both  a  printer  and  a  lawyer  as  he 
had  formerly  found  for  a  man  who  was  only  a  printer.  He 
accordingly  decided  to  go  to  Washington  City.  There  he 
arrived,  with  no  money  and  few  friends,  January  22,  1844. 
At  length  Senator  Mangum  came  to  his  assistance  and  se- 
cured him  employment  as  assistant  editor  of  a  daily  paper 
called  The  Whig  Standard,  of  which  Mr.  Nathan  Sargeant, 
a  journalist  of  repute,  was  the  editor-in-chief.  The  Stand- 
ard was  not  a  financial  success,  and  in  a  few  weeks  Mr.  Sar- 
geant withdrew,  leaving  the  entire  management  to  his 
newly-acquired  assistant.  During  the  hotly-waged  cam- 
paign of  1844  Mr.  Goodloe  had  control  of  the  paper,  but  he 
was  not  able  to  fix  it  so  deeply  in  the  affections  of  his  party 
that  it  would  supply  more  than  a  campaign  want.  On  the 
defeat  of  Mr.  Clay  it  suspended.  He  then  edited  the  George- 
tozvn  Advocate  for  a  short  while,  and  finally  took  a  small 
school.  He  at  length  secured  employment  of  a  more  per- 
manent nature  when   he  became  assistant   editor  of  the 


50  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [310 

National  Era,  a  prominent  anti-slavery  weekly,  published  in 
Washington,  and  edited  by  Dr.  Gamaliel  Bailey.  This 
paper  had  been  founded  in  1847  in  order  to  advocate  the 
principles  of  the  Liberty  Party.  It  had,  however,  says  Mr. 
Goodloe,  always  remained  free  from  party  domination.  On 
account  of  the  illness  and  subsequent  death  of  Dr.  Bailey, 
Mr.  Goodloe  became  at  length  the  editor-in-chief.  He  had 
now  reached  a  position  in  which  he  was  thoroughly  identi- 
fied with  the  anti-slavery  clause.  It  is  now  time  that  we  see 
how  he  came  to  hold  such  views. 

In  August,  1 83 1,  there  occurred  in  Northampton  county, 
Virginia,  the  well-known  Nat  Turner  Rebellion.  The  whole 
slaveholding  South  was  highly  alarmed.  In  Virginia  the 
occurrence  divided  public  opinion.  Many  people  thought 
it  proved  one  of  the  dangers  of  slavery  and  advocated  the 
enactment  of  such  laws  as  would  look  toward  the  gradual 
extinction  of  slavery.  This  proposition  was  most  warmly 
supported  in  the  western  counties  of  Virginia.  In  January 
of  the  succeeding  winter  the  legislature  took  up  the  matter 
and  had  a  long  debate  on  the  question  of  gradual  emanci- 
pation. The  speeches  made  on  this  occasion  were  both  ex- 
haustive and  able.  Slavery  was  handled  with  a  great  deal 
more  freedom  than  it  met  with  again  in  the  South  until  it 
felt  the  rough  force  of  Grant's  army  at  Appomattox.  The 
ablest  men  in  the  State  took  part  in  it,  and  they  were  mostly 
on  the  side  of  emancipation.  Among  this  number  was  one 
worthy  of  special  mention,  viz.,  Mr.  Charles  J.  Faulkner, 
now  of  West  Virginia.  He  was  then  a  young  man,  and 
spoke  ably  and  convincingly  for  freedom.  The  two  leading 
newspapers  of  Richmond,  the  Enquirer  and  the  Whig,  or- 
gans, respectively,  of  the  Democratic  and  Whig  parties, 
were  both  for  emancipation.  Mr.  Goodloe  was  then  a  jour- 
neyman printer  in  Oxford,  N.  C.  These  two  papers  came 
regularly  to  the  office  as  exchanges.  They  were  seized  and 
devoured  by  the  boy.  In  this  way  the  arguments  of  the 
anti-slavery  side  were  deeply  impressed  on  his  mind.  In 
fact,  the  statesmen  of  Virginia  who  were  opposed  to  eman- 


311]  Daniel  Reaves   Goodloe.  51 

cipation  did  not  attempt  to  defend  slavery.  They  merely 
maintained  that  emancipation  was  impracticable.  The 
planters  of  the  eastern  part  of  the  State,  where  slavery  was 
strongest,  had  a  more  effective  measure  than  argument  to 
use  against  the  proposition.  They  saw  that  the  life  of 
slavery  was  threatened.  They  affected  to  believe  that  the 
debates  would  stir  up  the  slaves  to  further  resistance.  They 
called  indignation  meetings,  in  which  it  was  declared  that 
the  legislative  debates  were  incendiary.  The  clamor  they 
raised  frightened  some  of  the  more  timid  members  of  the 
legislature,  with  the  result  that  further  discussion  of  the 
matter  was  dropped,  not,  however,  before  the  friends  of 
freedom  had  in  one  of  the  ballots  come  within  one  vote  of 
winning  the  fight.  "From  that  time,"  writes  Mr.  Goodloe, 
"dates  the  intense  hostility  in  all  the  South  to  the  idea  of 
emancipation  in  any  form,  whether  immediate  or  gradual. 
From  that  time  the  legislation  of  the  Southern  States  took 
on  a  harshness  never  before  practised.  Negroes  were  for- 
bidden to  learn  to  read,  and  to  teach  them  to  read  was  pun- 
ishable by  fine  and  imprisonment.  The  statutes  of  every 
Southern  State  bear  evidence  to  this  effect." 

The  Virginia  debates  were  read  with  interest  by  many 
North  Carolinians.  Some  of  the  State  newspapers  took  the 
side  of  emancipation.  This  was  notably  true  of  the  Greens- 
borough  Patriot,  then  edited  by  William  Swaim.  Here  was 
a  man  of  strong  talents  and  much  ability  in  writing.  He 
wrote  a  pamphlet  about  this  time,  which  was  an  attack  on 
slavery.  Mr.  Goodloe  says  that  it  would  have  done  credit 
to  any  writer.  It  was  reprinted  by  William  Goodell,  of 
New  York,  but  a  search  in  many  places  has  failed  to  bring 
it  to  light. 

While  at  Louisburg,  a  lawyer  without  clients,  Mr.  Good- 
loe's  mind  continued  to  dwell  on  the  moral  and  economic 
evils  of  slavery.  It  seemed  to  him  an  impossiblity  that  an 
institution  manifestly  founded  on  an  injustice  to  a  whole 
race  could  be  economically  wise  or  generally  salutary.  Says 
he:  "The  objections  to  slavery  pointed  out  by  Northern 
i 


52  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of  North   Carolina.         [312 

writers,  that  free  labor  was  more  efficient,  and  that  a  free 
man  would  do  more  work  than  a  slave,  failed  to  satisfy  me. 
I  was  aware  that  nothing  hindered  Southern  capitalists  and 
Southern  planters  from  employing  free  labor.  But  they 
gave  the  preference  to  slave  labor  as  a  matter  of  conveni- 
ence and  of  profit.  Slaves,  where  the  institution  was  toler- 
ated, were  preferred  to  any  other  form  of  property.  Lands 
in  all  the  South  had  little  market  value.  They  rarely  in- 
creased in  value  after  the  country  became  settled  and  occu- 
pied. Personal  property  other  than  slaves  had  no  salable 
value,  but  there  was  always  a  market  for  slaves,  either  at 
home  in  the  old  States,  or  in  the  Southwest."  Still  it  was 
impossible  not  to  see  that  the  slave  States  were  far  behind 
the  free  States  in  general  development.  Mr.  Goodloe 
thought  much  over  this  disparity  in  the  industrial,  educa- 
tional, literary  and  social  progress  of  the  two  sections. 
After  much  reflection  he  settled  the  question  to  his  satisfac- 
tion. One  day  in  1841,  while  driving  from  Louisburg  to 
the  neighboring  town  of  Franklinton,  the  conclusion  came 
to  him  "that  capital  invested  in  slaves  is  unproductive,  that 
it  only  serves  to  appropriate  the  wages  of  the  laborer."  This 
he  proceeded  to  illustrate  as  follows :  Two  farmers  live  on 
opposite  sides  of  the  Ohio  river,  the  one  in  Ohio,  the  other 
in  Kentucky.  Each  has  100  acres  of  equally  fertile  land, 
and  an  equal  capital  in  tools  and  stock.  But  the  Ken- 
tuckian  must  own  ten  slaves  to  work  his  land  at  an  invest- 
ment cost  of  $10,000.  The  two  have  equal  amounts  of 
money  invested  in  land,  and  they  raise  equal  amounts  of 
produce.  Now,  when  it  comes  to  calculating  the  net  re- 
turns of  the  year,  the  Kentuckian  will  have  to  make  more 
money  clear  in  order  to  receive  an  income  on  the  capital  in- 
vested in  slaves.  Hence  it  takes  more  capital  to  conduct 
farming  operations  in  Kentucky  than  in  Ohio.  "It  is  true," 
adds  Mr.  Goodloe,  "that  the  Kentuckian  receives  a  larger 
proportion  of  the  crop  than  the  Ohio  man ;  but  he  receives 
it  as  the  wages  of  the  ten  slaves,  who  receive  nothing.  But 
Kentucky,  the  community  in  which  the  slaveholder  resides, 


313]  Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe.  53 

is  enriched  to  no  greater  extent  than  Ohio,  where  the  farmer 
must  divide  profits  with  the  laborer."  The  same  would  be 
true  of  slaves  worked  in  a  factory.  "It  may  be  said  that  he 
may  hire  the  slaves.  No  matter ;  they  still  are  slaves  involv- 
ing an  unnecessary  investment  of  capital.  The  State  in  which 
the  factory  is  situated  is  the  loser  of  actual  capital,  whether 
the  employer  of  the  slaves,  as  hired  men,  loses  or  not.  The 
South,  when  the  Civil  War  came  on,  held  near  4,000,000  of 
slaves,  which  they  valued  at  an  average  of  nearly  $750  each, 
and  the  aggregate  value  was  nearly  $3,000,000,000.  This 
abstraction  of  so  vast  a  sum  from  active  use  furnishes  an- 
other explanation  of  the  dearth  of  commerce,  manufactures 
and  all  the  conveniences  of  life  from  the  South.  The  aboli- 
tion of  slavery  destroyed  no  property.  It  only  changed  or 
transferred  titles." 

In  regard  to  individual  wealth,  this  view  was  wrong.  If 
a  slave-owner  receives  wages  for  slave  labor  that  is  a  return 
for  slave  capital,  and  to  that  extent  the  capital  is  not  unpro- 
ductive to  him.  At  the  same  time  the  value  of  his  slave  has 
another  element  of  gain  in  the  offspring  of  the  slave.  In 
regard  to  social  wealth,  Mr.  Goodloe's  view  seems  mainly 
correct,  if  it  be  considered  from  the  Northern  standpoint. 
The  North  said  that  the  slave  was  a  person,  a  member  of 
society.  Consequently  his  own  property  was  decreased  as 
much  as  his  master's  was  increased,  and  the  wealth  of  the 
community  was  not  affected.  The  South  said,  however, 
that  the  slave  was  not  a  person,  not  a  member  of  society, 
but  a  thing.  His  property  was  not  decreased  by  his  not 
owning  himself,  because  he  was  nothing.  His  master's 
property  in  him  was,  accordingly,  a  loss  to  the  property  of 
no  member  of  society.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  a  gain  to 
one  who  was  certainly  a  member  of  society,  and  for  that 
reason  a  gain  to  society  itself.  Happily,  we  are  all  now 
agreed  that  the  slave  was  a  person  in  the  eyes  of  all  humane 
feelings,  and  that  his  rights  were  defeated  by  his  enslave- 
ment. The  theory,  then,  that  capital  invested  in  slaves  is 
unproductive  as  social  wealth  is  a  good  theory.     The  fur- 


54  Anii- Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [314 

ther  view  that  emancipation  destroyed  no  property  needs, 
however,  some  modification.  Temporarily,  emancipation 
did  destroy  property.  Value  depends  upon  usefulness. 
One  of  the  conditions  of  usefulness  is  efficiency.  When  one 
recalls  the  disorganized  condition  of  labor  in  the  South  just 
after  the  war,  he  will  see  that  although  the  labor  forces  were 
outwardly  undiminished,  they  were  still  not  so  efficient  as 
they  had  been,  because  they  lacked  sufficient  direction. 
This  effect  has  been  temporary.  How  long  it  has  con- 
tinued, or  will  continue,  depends  upon  the  negro's  acquisi- 
tion of  the  habit  of  working  without  compulsion,  a  process 
in  which,  it  ought  to  be  said,  his  progress  seems  satisfac- 
tory. An  opposing  force  to  this  fall  in  the  productiveness 
of  negro  labor  has  been  an  increased  productiveness  of 
white  labor  under  conditions  of  freedom.  What  is  the  exact 
resultant  of  all  these  forces  it  would  be  interesting  to  dis- 
cover. On  the  whole,  it  seems  in  favor  of  the  new  regime. 
Mr.  Goodloe's  views  were  embodied  in  a  pamphlet,  and 
when  he  went  to  Washington  he  laid  it  before  Mr.  John 
Quincy  Adams  at  his  house,  nearly  opposite  the  Ebbitt 
Hotel.  Mr.  Adams  examined  it  carefully  and  praised  it 
highly.  He  asked  the  author  if  he  proposed  to  publish  it. 
The  answer  was  that  he  was  unable  to  do  so.  Mr.  Adams 
then  suggested  a  newspaper  publication,  and  said  that  there 
was  a  young  man  named  Greeley,  who  was  publishing  an 
anti-slavery  Whig  newspaper  in  New  York,  but  that  he, 
Mr.  Adams,  was  not  acquainted  with  him.  On  considera- 
tion he  advised  that  the  article  be  sent  to  Mr.  Charles  King, 
a  son  of  Rufus  King,  then  publishing  the  New  York  Amer- 
ican. This  course  was  followed,  and  the  article  appeared 
in  the  American  at  the  end  of  March,  1844.  Two  years  later 
the  author  printed  500  copies  of  the  article  in  pamphlet 
form.  Later  in  life,  while  reading  Mill's  Political  Economy, 
he  was  struck  with  the  statement  that  mortgages  are  no 
part  of  natural  wealth.  Reasoning  by  analogy,  he  thought 
Mill  must  have  his  idea  of  slavery ;  but  further  investigation 
showed  that  the  arguments  used  in  reference  to  mortgages 


315]  Daiiiel  Reaves  Goodloe.  55 

had  not  been  applied,  as  might  have  been  done,  in  refer- 
ence to  slavery.  Mr.  Goodloe  then  sent  his  pamphlet  to  the 
distinguished  economist  and  received  a  letter  in  reply,  in 
which  Mr.  Mill  said  that  Mr.  Goodloe  was  clearly  right,  and 
that  he  would  embody  the  idea  advanced  in  the  pamphlet 
in  his  next  edition  of  the  Political  Economy,  but  he  did  not 
publish  another  edition. 

The  National  Era  in  its  earliest  days  drew  its  patronage 
from  the  whole  country,  wherever  there  was  anti-slavery 
sentiment.  It  was  one  of  the  few  papers  that  were  advo- 
cating that  cause.  With  Mr.  Lincoln's  election  a  large 
number  of  papers  appeared  as  supporters  of  anti-slavery 
principles.  Against  these  papers  the  Era  could  not  com- 
pete. Local  Abolitionists  turned  to  support  their  home  en- 
terprises, and  the  older  journal,  after  having  fought  the  bat- 
tle through  to  victory,  died  as  a  result  of  the  success  of  the 
cause  it  had  advocated.  Left  out  of  employment  by  this 
collapse,  Mr.  Goodloe  became  Washington  correspondent 
of  the  New  York  Times,  then  strongly  Republican.  On 
April  16,  1862,  President  Lincoln  signed  Senator  Wilson's 
bill  to  abolish  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia.  A  sum 
of  money  not  exceeding  $1,000,000  was  appropriated  to  pay 
for  the  liberated  slaves,  and  it  was  provided  that  the  average 
price  should  not  be  more  than  $300  each.  To  carry  out 
this  law  a  committee  consisting  of  Messrs.  D.  R.  Goodloe, 
chairman ;  Horatio  King  and,  J.  M.  Broadhead,  were  ap- 
pointed to  value  the  slaves  and  to  order  payment  for  the 
same.  The  committee  sat  for  nearly  nine  months,  took  evi- 
dence, heard  arguments,  examined  the  slaves  themselves 
with  the  aid  of  Mr.  B.  M.  CampDell,  an  expert  slave  dealer 
from  Baltimore,  and  awarded  such  sums  under  the  law  as 
they  thought  just.  In  this  way  3000  slaves  were  liberated, 
at  a  cost  to  the  government  of  $900,000,  in  round  numbers.1 


1  See  Ingle:  The  Negro  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  Johns  Hop- 
kins University  Studies,  nth  Series,  pp.  105-8.  Some  further  details 
have  been  supplied  from  Mr.  Goodloe's  own  statement. 


56  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [316 

For  a  year  or  two  after  this  Mr.  Goodloe  was  engaged  in 
editorial  work  on  the  Washington  Chronicle.  In  September, 
1865,  he  was  appointed  United  States  Marshal  in  North 
Carolina.  This  position  he  held  until  the  inauguration  of 
President  Grant,  when  he  was  removed  for  party  reasons. 
He  remained  in  North  Carolina  for  some  years,  but  finally 
returned  to  Washington  city,  where  he  occupied  himself  at 
first  with  the  compilation  of  a  book,  which  was  later  pub- 
lished under  the  title  of  "The  Birth  of  the  Republic."  He 
afterwards  wrote  a  history  of  the  reconstruction  period,  but 
being  unable  to  print  it  himself,  he  sold  the  manuscript  to  a 
prominent  politician.  That  gentleman  incorporated  it  in 
a  book  of  memoirs,  which  he  was  about  to  issue  to  cover  his 
experience  as  a  politician,  and  he  used  Mr.  Goodloe's  work 
without  giving  him  credit.  Having  purchased  the  work, 
he  doubtless  felt  relieved  from  any  obligation  to  acknowl- 
edge its  connection  with  another.  Later  on  Mr.  Goodloe 
compiled  a  synopsis  of  the  debates  of  Congress  from  the 
earliest  times  to  the  present  day,  but  the  work  has  not  been 
published.  He  remained  in  Washington  writing  for  the 
newspapers  and  investigating  many  features  of  our  national 
history.  In  the  winter  of  1894-5  he  published  in  the  Raleigh 
(N.  C.)  News  and  Observer  a  series  of  articles  on  the  recon- 
struction frauds  in  North  Carolina,  which  is  undoubtedly 
the  best  thing  written  on  the  subject.  In  the  spring  of 
1896  he  returned  to  Raleigh,  N.  C,  where  he  still  resides.1 

Eli  Washington  Caruthers. 

Few  people,  perhaps,  who  know  Dr.  Caruthers  as  an  his- 
torian realize  that  he  wrote  a  book  on  slavery.  He  was,  as 
most  of  those  who  know  of  him  will  understand,  pastor  of 
Presbyterian  churches  around  Greensboro,  N.  C,  for  over 
forty  years.  He  was  a  man  of  conviction  and  was  known 
to  be  opposed  to  slavery;    but  he  made  no  display  of  his 

1  The  facts  for  the  above  sketch  are  derived,  unless  otherwise 
stated,  from  data  furnished  by  Mr.  Goodloe  himself. 


317]  Eli  Washington  Caruthers.  57 

views.  Finally,  one  Sunday  morning  in  July,  1861,  at  his 
church  at  Alamance,  he  prayed  that  the  young  men  of  his 
congregation  who  were  in  the  army  "might  be  blessed  of 
the  Lord  and  returned  in  safety  though  engaged  in  a  bad 
cause."  The  next  day  the  officials  of  the  church  informed 
him  that  they  needed  him  no  longer.  It  was  probably  after 
this  that  he  wrote  his  work  on  "American  Slavery  and  the 
Immediate  Duty  of  Slaveholders."  This  book  was  not 
published,  and  until  recently  few  knew  of  its  existence.  In 
February,  1898,  it  was  discovered  by  Dr.  Dred  Peacock  and 
placed  in  the  Ethel  Carr  Peacock  Library  at  Greensboro 
Female  College. 

Two  prefaces  were  written  ;  one  when  the  manuscript  was 
prepared,  and  one  in  1865,  when  the  author  made  some 
changes  in  it.     In  the  second  preface  he  says : 

"The  following  work  would  have  been  published  years 
ago,  but  for  the  last  fifteen  years  its  publication  or  circula- 
tion would  not  have  been  tolerated  in  any  one  of  the  South- 
ern States.  It  was  written  at  the  request  of  some  valued 
friends  who  had  expressed  the  wish  to  see  my  views  in  a 
more  permanent  form  than  the  incidental  or  transient  utter- 
ances of  conversation,  without  any  design  of  ever  giving  it 
to  the  public  in  its  present  form." 

Although  slavery  had  then  been  abolished,  it  was  decided 
to  publish,  because  the  people  were  thought  to  be  in  a  better 
mood  to  understand  and  to  do  justice  to  anti-slavery  argu- 
ments, and  because  "we  have  the  authority  of  the  Bible  for 
holding  up  the  calamitous  events  to  the  wicked  actors  in 
them  as  warnings."  In  the  first  preface  is  this  statement: 
"There  are  some  hard  things  in  it  [the  book],  and  if  there 
were  not  it  could  do  no  good ;  for  an  evil  of  such  an  extent, 
enormity,  and  long  standing  cannot  be  demolished  or  re- 
moved by  a  little  smooth  talk.  The  whole  truth  must  be 
told The  language  is  not  abusive,  and  was  cer- 
tainly not  intended  to  be  so ;  for  neither  my  dispositon  nor 
my  principles  allow  me  to  employ  harsh  and  vituperative 
language." 


58  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [318 

Dr.  Caruthers  was  born  in  Rowan  county,  N.  C,  October 
26,  1793.  He  graduated  from  Princeton  in  181 7.  It  was, 
perhaps,  while  there  that  he  shaped  his  views  on  slaverv. 
Here  he  met  Mr.  G.  M.  Stroud,  author  of  "The  Laws  Relat- 
ing to  Slavery."  From  this  work  he  took  many  of  his  facts, 
and  it  is  possible  that  Stroud  had  a  certain  formative  influ- 
ence on  the  views  of  his  friend. 

A  text  was  placed  at  the  beginning  of  the  book:  "Let 
my  people  go  that  they  may  serve  me"  (Exodus,  10:  8). 
The  author  stated  that  he  should  treat  African  slavery  as 
"viewed  in  connection  with  the  covenant  of  redemption." 
Plainly,  he  contended  that  the  negroes  should  be  free  so  that 
they  might  become  Christians,  and  that  they  could  not  be- 
come such  in  slavery.  How  he  developed  this  thought  is 
gathered  from  the  following  abridgment  of  the  Table  of 
Contents : 

"I.     The  Claim— My  People. 

"1.  On  creation  and  preservation.  Natural  differences 
among  men  furnish  no  justification  of  slavery.  The  deep 
and  long  continued  degradation  of  the  Africans  in  their  own 
land  no  reason  why  they  should  be  enslaved.  The  alleged 
antiquity  of  slavery  no  justification  of  the  practice.  The 
orderings  of  Providence  furnish  no  justification  of  slavery. 

"2.  The  Lord's  Claim  on  the  Africans  and  all  other 
races  and  portions  of  mankind  is  founded  on  Redemption. 
The  opinions  of  learned  and  good  men  in  favor  of  slavery 
is  no  proof  that  it  is  right.  Slavery  originated  in  avarice, 
falsehood,  and  cruelty. 

"II.  The  Demand;  'Let  my  people  go' :  The  Demand 
enforced  by  Providence ;  Human  beings  cannot  be  held  as 
property 

"III.  Reason  of  the  demand,  'That  they  may  serve  me.' 
Their  powers  can  never  be  developed  while  they  are  in  a 
condition  of  slavery.  According  to  the  present  laws  and 
usages  of  the  land  slaves  cannot  make  that  entire  conse- 
cration of  themselves  to  the  Lord  which  the  Gospel  requires 
and  to  which  the  renewed  nature  prompts  them.     Under 


319]  Eli  Washington   Caruthers.  59 

existing  laws  and  in  the  present  state  of  society  slaves  can- 
not have  that  equality  of  rights  and  privileges  which  is  in 
the  New  Testament  accorded  to  all  true  believers." 

The  purpose  of  the  book,  as  he  said,  was  "to  contrast  the 
unjust,  unchristian,  inhuman  laws  of  the  South  relating  to 
slavery  with  the  teachings  of  the  Bible  and  the  original 
instincts  of  Nature."  He  was  impelled  to  write  the  book 
because  he  had  never  seen  a  treatment  of  the  slavery  ques- 
tion from  this  standpoint.  Whatever  other  books  may  have 
been  written  on  slavery,  it  is  certain  that  none  gave  a  more 
positive  note  of  opposition  than  this.  On  the  separation  of 
families  he  was  very  hard.  "Many  a  sad  tragedy  of  broken 
hearts  and  ruined  homes,"  said  he,  "has  been  the  result  [of 
separation].  I  have  known  some  instances  in  which  they 
have  been  permitted  to  live  on  in  great  harmony  and  affec- 
tion to  an  advanced  age ;  but  such  instances,  so  far  as  my 
observations  have  gone,  have  been,  'like  angels'  visits,  few 
and  far  between.'  Generally,  in  a  few  years  at  most,  they 
have  been  separated — sold  off  under  the  hammer  like  other 
stock  and  borne  away  to  a  returnless  distance." 

It  was,  however,  against  the  law  forbidding  slaves  to  be 
taught  to  read  and  write  that  he  reserved  his  strongest  ana- 
themas. When  this  law  was  passed,  he  charged,  the  only 
argument  made  for  it  was  that  if  slaves  could  read  they 
would  read  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  speeches 
in  Congress,  and  the  newspapers,  and  so  become  acquainted 
with  their  rights,  discontented  with  slavery,  and  less  profit- 
able to  their  masters.  "It  seems  strange,"  he  continued, 
"that  a  Protestant,  a  Christian  people, — nominally  such,  at 
least, — are  not  ashamed  to  use  such  an  argument."  In 
another  place  he  burst  forth :  "How  dare  you  by  your  im- 
pious enactments  doom  millions  of  your  fellow-beings  to 
such  gross  and  perpetual  ignorance?  How  dare  you  say 
that  neither  they  nor  their  unborn  generations  shall  ever  be 
taught  to  read  the  glorious  revelation  that  God  has  given 
and  designed  for  them  as  much  as  for  you?"  Still  later,  he 
returns  to  the  subject  and  says :     "When  do  you  think  that 


60  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [320 

you  will  have  made  so  much  money  by  their  labor  that  you 
will  be  willing  to  let  them  go?  .  .  .  .If  you  believe,  as 
you  pretend,  that  the  Lord's  design  in  permitting  them  to 
be  brought  here  was  that  they  might  be  converted  and  pre- 
pared to  carry  the  Gospel  back  to  Africa,  repeal  your  laws 
forbidding  them  to  be  taught;  give  them  the  time,  means, 
and  motives  necessary  to  improve  them  and  send  them  back 
full  handed  and  well  instructed  to  the  land  of  their  fathers." 
It  is  doubtful  if  a  stronger  or  clearer  anti-slavery  argument 
was  ever  made  on  this  continent. 

This  is  enough  about  a  book  that  was  never  printed.  Its 
author  was  not,  strictly  speaking,  an  anti-slavery  leader. 
He  did  not  stand  out  as  a  teacher  of  opposition  to  slavery. 
He  was  not  a  leader.  But  he  wrote  one  of  the  strongest 
arraignments  of  slavery  in  the  abstract  that  ever  appeared. 
His  book  was  a  sermon  expanded.  Along  with  the  manu- 
script I  found  a  manuscript  sermon  on  the  same  text  (Exo- 
dus, 10 :  8),  showing  whence  came  the  book.  This  book  was 
not  given  to  remove  slavery,  but  to  cure  the  wound  made  by 
forcible  emancipation.  When  the  South  writhed  in  bitter- 
ness under  its  hard  fate,  it  would  have  been  a  good  thing 
for  its  peace  of  mind  if  it  could  have  been  made  to  see 
that  the  extinction  of  slavery  was  for  the  best.  Had  Dr. 
Caruthers  lived  his  attempt  in  this  direction  would,  no 
doubt,  have  been  delivered  to  the  public.  It  would,  per- 
haps, have  failed  immediately.  Ultimately,  it  would  have 
reached  those  for  whom  it  was  intended.  Today  most 
people  in  the  South  acquiesce  in  the  conclusion  that  slavery 
was  an  evil.  But  there  are  few  who  understand  why  it  was 
an  evil.  No  better  foundation  for  the  study  of  present  social 
conditions  in  the  South  can  be  had  than  a  complete  sur- 
vey of  the  conditions  of  Southern  slavery.  For  such  a  sur- 
vey, Dr.  Caruthers'  work  is  of  great  value. 

Lunsford   Lane. 

It  is  a  fit  thing  that  this  series  of  sketches  should  close 
with  the  story  of  the  career  of  a  member  of  the  enslaved  race 


321]  Lunsford  Lane.  61 

itself.  This  story  will  illustrate  many  sides  of  the  slavery 
question  in  the  South.  Here  is  the  blight  of  slavery  on 
white  and  black,  the  exceptionable  negro,  who,  by  admir- 
able perseverance  and  endurance,  struggles  on  to  freedom, 
the  mass  of  thoughtless  and  unambitious  negroes  in  the 
background,  the  touch  of  human  sympathy  on  the  part  of 
the  better  class  of  whites,  and  the  maddened  roar  of  the 
ignorant  and  infuriated  larger  class.  How  truly  was  this 
a  picture  of  slavery  and  its  surroundings. 

Lunsford  Lane1  was  a  slave  of  Mr.  Sherwood  Haywood, 
a  prominent  citizen  of  Raleigh,  N.  C.  His  master  was  the 
owner  of  two  plantations,  one  in  Wake  county,  near  the  city 
of  Raleigh,  the  other  in  Edgecomb  county.  Lunsford  was 
born  in  the  early  part  of  the  century,  and  grew  to  manhood 
before  the  beginning  of  the  severer  attitude  toward  the 
slaves  which  came  after  the  Northampton  insurrection  of 
183 1.     His  parents,  of  pure  African  descent,  had  been  kept 

1  This  sketch  is  based  on  the  "Memoir  of  Lunsford  Lane,"  by 
Rev.  Wm.  G.  Hawkins  (Boston,  1863).  The  narrative  is  not  free 
from  the  extravagances  of  a  zealous  Abolitionist.  In  places  conver- 
sations have  been  reproduced  with  a  freedom  worthy  of  the  Greek 
historians,  and  at  times  the  author  has  allowed  his  imagination  to 
portray  surroundings  which  are  characteristically  Southern,  but  which 
in  this  case  did  not  exist.  As  for  the  main  facts  of  the  narrative,  I 
have  no  reason  to  reject  them.  Information  about  the  case  is  hard  to 
obtain  in  Raleigh,  but  from  an  old  resident  I  obtained  a  corroboration 
ol  the  account  of  the  mobbing  of  Lane  as  herein  given.  Still  I  have 
not  found  any  mention  of  the  occurence  in  the  Raleigh  papers  of 
thai-day.  One  of  these  papers  was  edited  by  Thomas  Loring  who 
was  the  Mayor  before  whom  Lunsford  was  tried,  yet  it  is  silent. 
It  is  likely  that  the  matter  was  not  published  for  fear  of  the  effect 
it  would  have  when  copied  in  Northern  papers. 

A  letter  from  Mr.  Hawkins  says  that  the  facts  were  obtained  from 
Lunstord  himself,  and  that  on  a  visit  to  Raleigh  after  the  war  the 
"material  facts  outlined  in  the  story  "  were  confirmed  by  a  number  of 
colored  people  who  had  known,  or  were  related  to,  Lunsford  Lane. 
Mr.  Hawkins  closes  thus  :  "  He  [Lane]  impressed  me  as  being  a 
man  of  uncommon  natural  intelligence  and  truthfulness,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  that  the  account  of  his  life  which  I  have  given  is  sub- 
stantially true."  J.  S.  B. 


62  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [322 

in  the  town  for  family  service,  and  thus  their  offspring  had 
opportunities  beyond  the  other  negroes.  Lunsford  early 
learned  to  read  and  write,  a  privilege  that  would  not  legally 
have  been  allowed  him  a  few  years  later.  Many  men  of 
political  prominence  visited  at  his  master's  house,  and  from 
waiting  on  these  he  acquired  much  general  information.  He 
also  learned  a  great  deal  from  the  speeches  of  great  poli- 
ticians. He  heard  speeches  from  Calhoun,  Preston,  of 
South  Carolina,  Badger,  Mangum,  and  many  others  of  less 
note.  He  waited  on  La  Fayette  when  he  passed  through 
Raleigh  in  1824,  and  was  greatly  impressed  by  the  distin- 
guished Frenchman's  devotion  to  liberty.  Once  he  heard 
Dr.  McPheeters,  the  Presbyterian  minister  in  Raleigh,  say : 
"It  is  impossible  to  enslave  an  intelligent  people."  This 
made  an  impression  which  he  never  forgot.  His  desire  to 
gain  his  freedom  grew  daily,  and  all  the  spare  money  that  he 
received  as  fees  from  his  master's  guests  was  put  away 
toward  that  end. 

In  the  hope  of  acquiring  liberty  there  was  not  a  little  en- 
couragement for  him  in  the  life  of  the  negroes  of  the  town. 
At  that  time  a  strict  surveillance  had  not  been  established 
over  the  religious  and  social  meetings  of  slaves.  They  ac- 
cordingly often  in  their  chance  meetings  discussed  means 
of  improving  their  condition.  The  natural  inclination  of 
the  negro  to  speech-making  helped  in  this  process.  The 
following  illustration  of  this  faculty  will  be  of  value  here. 
The  colored  boys  of  the  town  had  a  custom  of  assembling 
every  Sunday  afternoon  at  a  certain  mineral  spring  in 
the  suburbs  of  the  place  and  discussing,  in  imitation  of  the 
whites,  the  issues  of  the  day.  Some  of  them,  especially  the 
slaves  of  prominent  men,  could  repeat  with  great  exactness 
speeches  that  they  had  heard  during  the  week.  The  whites 
were  often  present  at  these  meetings,  and  the  master  of  a 
bright  slave  boy  would  feel  a  pride  in  the  prowess  of  his 
negro  and  encourage  him  to  improve.  At  last,  however, 
they  came  to  see  that  the  effect  of  this  was  to  turn  the  minds 
of  the  slaves  toward  freedom,  and  they  forbade  the  meetings. 
In  such  conditions  the  boy  Lunsford  found  himself  placed. 


323]  Lunsford  Lane.  63 

His  early  savings  for  the  purpose  of  buying  his  freedom 
had  reached  a  considerable  sum  by  the  time  the  boy  became 
a  man.  A  part  of  this  he  lost  through  bad  investments, 
and  the  balance  he  was  forced  to  spend  on  his  wife.  As 
soon  as  he  was  grown  he  had  married  a  slave  of  Mr.  Wil- 
liam Boylan,  a  most  excellent  citizen  of  Raleigh.  Shortly 
afterwards  Mr.  Boylan  had  to  sell  this  woman,  but  he  gave 
her  the  privilege  of  selecting  for  her  new  master  anyone 
who  would  buy  her.  Lunsford  was  a  Baptist  and  his  wife 
a  Methodist.  True  to  the  instinct  of  the  race,  she  decided 
the  matter  according  to  church  affiliations.  His  wife  con- 
cluded that  she  would  be  better  off  if  she  were  owned  by  a 
member  of  her  own  church,  and  he  prevailed  upon  Mr.  Ben- 
jamin B.  Smith,  a  wealthy  Methodist,  to  purchase  her  and 
her  two  children,  the  price  paid  being  $560.  Lunsford 
charged  that  Mr.  Smith  neglected  to  feed  and  clothe  the 
woman  properly,  knowing  that  her  husband,  who  was 
known  to  have  some  money,  would  not  let  her  suffer.  In 
this  way  he  exhausted  the  balance  of  his  early  savings. 

Lunsford  had  been  taught  by  his  father  the  secret  of  mak- 
ing a  superior  kind  of  smoking  tobacco,  and  this  the  father 
and  son  now  began  to  manufacture  for  the  market.  To 
have  free  opportunity  for  this  he  hired  his  time,  paying  for 
it  from  $100  to  $120  a  year.  It  was  some  time  near  this 
date  that  his  master  died.  Mr.  Haywood  had  been  an  in- 
dulgent master.  He  had  assured  Lunsford  that  he  should 
be  allowed  to  buy  himself.  Lunsford  now  found  himself 
the  property  of  his  former  master's  widow,  and  he  feared 
that  she  would  not  be  willing  to  fulfill  the  promise.  He 
says,  however,  that  she  valued  the  good  opinion  of  her 
neighbors,  and  that  they  would  expect  the  fulfilment  of  Mr. 
Haywood's  promise..  Stifling  his  doubts,  he  worked  all  die 
harder.  The  demand  for  his  tobacco  was  growing.  He 
enlarged  his  plant  and  made  arrangements  to  sell  the  pro- 
duct in  the  neighboring  towns  of  Fayetteville,  Salisbury  and 
Chapel  Hill.     At  the  end  of  about  eight  years  he  had  saved 


64  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.         [324 

$1000.  With  much  anxiety  he  approached  his  mistress  to 
propose  the  purchase  of  his  liberty.  Of  this  negotiation  he 
says  :  "I  casually  asked  her  price,  provided  I  should  desire 
my  freedom.  She  said  she  would  be  satisfied  with  $1000.  I 
then  very  frankly  told  her  I  greatly  desired  my  free- 
dom, and  asked  if  she  was  ready  to  execute  the  deed, 
provided  I  could  find  some  person  whom  I  could 
trust  by  whom  the  purchase  in  my  behalf  could  be 
made."  A  slave,  it  should  be  said,  had  no  standing  in  law, 
and  could  not  make  a  contract.  Lunsford,  therefore,  had 
to  get  some  trusted  white  man  to  buy  and  then  emancipate 
him.  He  decided  to  entrust  the  affair  to  Mr.  Smith,  his 
wife's  master.  That  gentleman,  after  making  the  purchase, 
applied  to  the  courts  for  leave  to  emancipate  Lane.  Now 
by  law  slaves  could  be  freed  for  meritorious  services  only. 
No  such  services  could  be  shown  in  this  case,  and  the  appli- 
cation was  refused.  Mr.  Smith,  who  was  a  merchant,  then 
proposed  that  Lane  should  accompany  him.  on  his  next  trip 
to  the  North  and  have  the  freedom  papers  issued  there. 
This  was  agreed  to,  and  a  year  later  the  emancipation  papers 
oi  Lunsford  Lane  were  recorded  in  New  York  city. 

Lunsford  was,  like  most  negroes,  religious  by  nature. 
He  says  that  attendance  on  church  services  was  a  means  of 
much  instruction  for  him.  He  got  the  written  permission 
of  his  mistress  to  join  the  Baptist  Church.  Every  Sunday 
there  was  one  sermon  for  the  slaves  preached  by  a  white 
parson — a  law  of  1831  forbade  any  slave  or  free  negro  to 
preach  to  slaves.  These  sermons,  he  says,  were  usually  on 
the  duty  of  the  slaves  to  obey  their  masters.  The  texts  were 
usually  like  these :  "Servants,  be  obedient  to  them  that 
are  your  masters,"  and  "not  with  eye-service,  as  men 
pleasers."  One  kind-hearted  preacher,  whom  all  the 
slaves  liked,  became  very  unpopular  when  he  preached  a 
sermon  in  which  he  argued  that  God  had  predestined  the 
negroes  to  be  slaves.  Lunsford  found  a  friend  in  Dr. 
Heath,  a  Presbyterian  minister,  who  afterwards  became  a 
popular  temperance  lecturer.     He  was  a  Virginian,  and  be- 


325]  Lunsford  JLa?ie.  65 

fore  coming-  to  Raleigh  had  liberated  a  large  number  of 
slaves,  and  through  the  Colonization  Society  had  sent  them 
to  Africa.  His  views  of  slavery  were  liberal,  and  he  helped 
Lunsford  in  many  ways. 

The  business  sense  of  Lane  now  began  to  expand  his  lines 
of  labor.  Although  he  kept  to  the  manufacture  of  tobacco, 
he  added  the  making  of  pipes,  and  began  to  sell  almost 
everything  kept  in  an  ordinary  village  store.  He  also 
opened  a  wood  yard,  and  bought  horses  and  wagons  for  use 
in  connection  with  it.  He  was  patronized  by  whites  as  well  , 
as  by  blacks.  In  1839  ne  bought  a  house  and  lot,  for  which 
he  paid  $500.  It  had  long  been  his  object  to  buy  his  wife 
and  children,  the  latter  of  whom  now  numbered  six.  Mr. 
Smith  offered  to  sell  them  for  $3000.  This  was  thought  to 
be  too  much,  and  after  negotiating  it  was  reduced  to  $2500, 
at  which  sum  the  purchase  was  effected.  He  gave  Mr. 
Smith  five  notes  for  $500  each,  and  received  in  return  that 
gentleman's  obligation  that  when  the  notes  were  paid  he 
would  sign  a  bill  of  sale  for  the  slaves.  It  is  impossible  not 
to  notice  here  the  rapid  appreciation  in  the  value  of  slave 
property.  This  woman  and  two  of  her  children  had  been 
bought  not  more  than  eight  years  earlier  for  $560,  and  were 
now  sold  at  an  advance  of  $1940,  and  in  the  meantime  the 
master  had  had  her  services.  It  was  a  happy  day  for  the 
former  slave  when  he  brought  his  wife  and  children  out 
from  the  house  of  bondage  and  gathered  them  around  his 
own  fireside  with  good  hope  of  seeing  them  soon  as  free  as 
himself.  His  achievement  had  been  wonderful,  and  is  an 
indication  of  what  a  policy  of  gradual  emancipation  might 
have  done  in  developing  his  race,  could  circumstances  have 
been  so  shaped  that  it  might  have  been  entered  upon.  He 
had  paid  $1000  for  his  freedom.  He  had  paid  another  $1000 
in  yearly  wages  while  he  was  hiring  his  time,  had  supported 
himself  and  helped  to  support  his  family  in  the  meantime, 
had  paid  $500  for  his  home,  and  had  a  good  business  in  his 
own  name. 


66  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of  North   Carolina.         [326 

All  this  prosperity  was  beginning  to  attract  the  notice  of 
the  whites.  Several  other  negroes  in  the  place  were  making 
progress  in  the  same  way.  Some  of  the  whites  thought  this 
was  likely  to  have  a  bad  effect  on  the  slaves  generally.  Fear- 
ing something  like  this,  Lunsford  had  been  careful,  as  he 
said,  not  to  intrude  his  intelligence,  but  to  seem  to  know 
less  than  he  did  know.  He  dressed  as  poorly  and  fared  as 
simply  as  if  he  were  still  a  slave.  He  also  said  that  he  was 
careful  never  to  do  anything  which  looked  like  leadership  of 
the  other  negroes,  that  he  had  done  nothing  disorderly,  and 
that  he  had  never  plotted  to  free  the  slaves.  The  good 
opinion  in  which  he  was  held  by  some  of  the  best  men  in 
the  place  is  evidence  that  this  is  true.  On  the  evidence  of 
his  biographer  none  of  these  things  were  alleged  against 
him.  Everything  indicates  that  he  devoted  himself  quietly 
to  the  one  object  of  purchasing  his  family.  Certainly  with 
that  object  in  view  it  would  have  been  a  most  unwise  thing 
to  appear  to  be  an  agitator.  Throughout  the  administra- 
tion of  Governor  Dudley,  and  through  part  of  that  of  Gov- 
ernor Morehead,  he  was  janitor  and  messenger  in  the  office 
of  the  Governor's  private  secretary.  Both  the  Governor 
and  the  private  secretary  testified  to  his  great  efficiency  and 
integrity.  To  one  class  of  whites,  however,  his  presence 
and  his  success  were  becoming  exceedingly  objectionable. 
These  were  the  younger  and  more  adventurous  members  of 
the  community.  They  were  in  most  cases  the  poorer 
classes,  although  some  reckless  sons  of  the  leading  families 
acted  with  them.  They  inherited  one  effect  of  the  system 
of  slavery  in  the  ignorance  that  all  this  class  shared  for 
lack  of  common  schools.  With  untaught  minds  their  pas- 
sions were  often  the  impulse  of  action,  and  such  seems  to 
have  been  the  condition  now.  They  were  unable  to  see  far 
enough  to  understand  that  an  industrious  and  progressive 
negro  like  Lane  would  be  an  advantage  to  the  negro  race, 
making  them  more  conservative  and  restraining  the  ten- 
dency to  excesses.  They  became  alarmed,  and  soon  con- 
vinced themselves  that  it  would  be  a  great  calamity  if  every 


327]  Lunsford  Lane.  67 

negro  could  buy  himself  and  his  family  at  the  good  round 
prices  that  Lane  had  paid.  They  determined  to  run  him  out 
of  the  community.  Inasmuch  as  he  had  been  freed  in  New 
York,  they  concluded  that  he  came  within  the  provision  of 
a  statute  which  forbade  free  negroes  from  other  States  from 
coming  into  North  Carolina  to  live.  Free  negroes  violating 
this  act  and  not  removing  out  of  the  State  within  twenty 
days  after  notice  of  it  had  been  served  on  them  were  liable  to 
a  fine  of  $500,  in  default  of  which  they  should  be  sold  for  ten 
years.  About  the  first  of  November,  1840,  Lane  received 
notification  from  two  justices  of  the  peace  as  follows  :  "Un- 
less you  leave  and  remove  out  of  this  State  within  twenty 
days  you  will  be  proceeded  against  for  the  penalty  pre- 
scribed by  the  said  Act  of  Assembly,  and  be  otherwise  dealt 
with  as  the  law  directs." 

There  seems  to  have  been  no  question  that  under  the  law 
Lane  was  indictable.  He,  for  his  part,  appealed  to  his  white 
friends.  He  went  to  see  Mr.  C.  C.  Battle,  private  secretary 
to  Governor  Dudley,  who  took  up  the  matter  with  energy. 
Mr.  Battle  wrote  to  the  attorney  on  the  opposite  side,  men- 
tioning the  services  of  Lane,  especially  during  the  session  of 
the  Legislature,  which  was  then  about  to  begin,  and  asking 
that  the  prosecution  might  be  suspended  until  January  1. 
No  objection  was  made  to  this,  and  the  matter  was  dropped 
for  the  time.  The  object  was  to  stay  proceedings  until  the 
Legislature  met,  and  then  to  get  a  private  law  allowing  the 
defendant  to  stay  in  the  State  until  he  had  finished  paying 
for  his  family,  he  agreeing  to  leave  when  that  was  accom- 
plished. On  the  day  the  Legislature  convened  he  was  again 
summoned  to  appear  before  the  same  magistrates  and  show 
cause  why  he  should  not  be  punished  for  remaining  in  the 
city  twenty  days  after  notice  had  been  given.  He  easily 
gave  bail  to  appear  at  court  thirty  days  later.  At  the  meet- 
ing of  the  court  the  prosecution  was  not  ready  for  trial,  and 
the  case  was  postponed  until  the  next  court,  three  months 
later.  He  thus  gained  four  months.  In  the  meantime  his 
petition  was  before  the  Legislature.     The  other  free  negroes 

5 


68  Anti- Slavery  Leaders  of North  Carolina.  [328 

in  the  town  who  were  buying  their  families  had  received 
notices  similar  to  that  of  Lunsford,  and  they,  too,  had  peti- 
tioned the  Legislature.  The  petitions  were  referred  to  a 
committee,  which  brought  in  a  bill  favorable  to  the  negroes. 
The  fate  of  this  bill  was  a  matter  of  great  concern  to  Luns- 
ford. No  negro  was  allowed  to  enter  the  chambers  of  the 
two  houses  when  the  Assembly  was  in  session.  He  found 
out  the  committee  to  whom  the  matter  was  referred,  and 
then  patiently  traced  it  through  its  several  stages  until  the 
day  on  which  it  was  set  for  final  decision.  He  waited  anx- 
iously around  the  Statehouse,  he  interviewed  the  members 
as  he  could  approach  them,  and  he  awaited  the  result  with 
great  concern.  Finally  a  member  came  out  and  said : 
"Well,  Lunsford,  the  negro  bill  is  killed."  It  was  a  severe 
blow  to  the  poor  man.  To  us,  who  view  the  matter  after 
passions  have  cooled  and  the  false  theories  of  slavery  are 
gone,  it  seems  certainly  to  have  been  the  doing  of  a  great 
cruelty.  It  is  to  the  great  credit  of  Lunsford  Lane  an£l  the 
other  men  who  were  in  the  same  position  that  they  bowed 
quietly  and  without  open  complaint  to  the  decision.  Slavery 
demanded,  above  all  things,  the  certainty  of  its  own  perpetu- 
ation. Before  that,  all  else — sympathy,  confidence,  gener- 
ous sentiments,  industrial  skill,  and  public  intelligence — 
must  go  down.  It  accordingly  developed  a  hundred  eyes 
with  which  to  discover,  and  a  hundred  hands  with  which  to 
stop,  any  movement  of  the  slave  that  looked  toward  his 
freedom. 

Nothing  was  now  left  for  Lunsford  but  to  make  his  prepa- 
rations for  leaving,  and  for  leaving  without  his  family.  He 
thought  of  some  friends  he  had  made  in  the  North  when  he 
had  gone  there  to  be  liberated.  Thither  he  now  turned  his 
steps.  When  he  reached  Washington  City  he  called  on  Mr. 
Joseph  Gales,  formerly  the  editor  of  the  Raleigh  Register, 
but  then  living  in  Washington  with  his  son,  who  was  one  of 
the  editors  of  the  National  Intelligencer.  Mr.  Gales  received 
him  kindly,  and  undertook  to  help  him  on  his  journey.  He 
gave  him  some  recommendations,  and  warned  him  that  he 


329]  Lunsford  Lane.  69 

might  have  trouble  in  getting  through  Baltimore,  since  the 
railroad  station  in  that  place  was  being  watched  closely  to 
stop  runaway  slaves  from  the  South.  As  it  turned  out  he 
did  have  some  difficulty  in  Baltimore,  though  not  exactly 
the  same  kind  that  he  had  been  warned  against.  He  came 
near  falling  victim  to  what  seems  to  have  been  a  plot  to  kid- 
nap and  sell  him  into  the  far  South  from  whose  depths,  if  he 
ever  reached  there,  his  voice  would  probably  never  have 
been  able  to  make  itself  heard  by  his  friends.  Shortly  after 
he  had  reached  the  city  he  and  a  traveling  companion  were 
arrested,  at  the  instance  of  a  negro  trader  named  Slatter,  of 
rather  unfavorable  reputation,  on  the  charge  of  being  run- 
away slaves  from  the  South.  The  case  was  tried  before  a 
magistrate  named  Shane,  whom  the  negro  friends  of  Luns- 
ford considered  an  accomplice  of  Slatter.  Regardless  of 
the  fact  that  the  two  men  had  their  freedom  papers  properly 
signed,  the  justice  was  about  to  give  judgment  against  them, 
when  a  Mr.  Walsh,  a  rising  young  lawyer  of  the  city,  who  was 
gaining  some  note  as  being  on  the  side  of  the  slaves,  rose 
and  made  so  strong  an  argument  in  favor  of  the  men  that 
the  magistrate  was  constrained  to  release  them.  Lane  then 
proceeded  to  Philadelphia,  where  he  found  friends,  who,  in 
turn,  sent  him  on  to  other  friends  in  New  York.  Here  it 
was  agreed  that  he  should  be  given  countenance  in  going 
through  the  North  to  make  appeals  for  funds  to  liberate 
his  family.  Returning  at  once  to  the  South,  he  settled  his 
affairs  preparatory  to  his  departure.  He  had  already  paid 
Mr.  Smith  $560  on  his  indebtedness,  and  he  had  received 
one  boy,  whom  he  took  North  and  left  with  friends.  Mr. 
Smith  now  agreed  to  accept  the  house  and  lot  in  Raleigh 
for  $500,  provided,  the  balance  of  $1440  should  be  paid 
in  cash.  It  was  arranged  that  the  case  then  pending  against 
him  should  be  dropped,  he  paying  the  cost  and  leaving  the 
State.  With  these  things  done,  he  left  for  the  North  just 
as  the  court  to  which  he  was  bound  over  was  convening. 

His  hopes  of  assistance  were  not  in  vain.     By  lecturing  in 
many  places,  chiefly  in  New  England,  presenting  the  simple 


70  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [330 

facts  of  his  experience,  he  was  able  to  collect  in  about  one 
year  the  amount  he  wanted  to  raise.  Early  in  1842  he  wrote 
to  Mr.  Smith,  asking  him  to  get  the  Governor  to  give  him  a 
written  permission  to  come  back  to  Raleigh  to  get  his 
family.  The  Governor  replied  that  he  had  no  authority  to 
grant  such  a  privilege,  but  that  he  thought  it  would  be  per- 
fectly safe  for  Lane  to  come  to  Raleigh,  provided  he  stayed 
no  longer  than  twenty  days.  This  seems  to  have  been  good 
law  under  the  statute.  On  Saturday,  April  23,  1842,  the 
ex-slave  arrived  in  Raleigh.  He  remained  quietly  with  his 
family  during  Sunday,  and  Monday  morning  went  to  the 
store  of  Mr.  Smith  to  have  a  settlement,  hoping  to  be  off 
as  soon  as  possible.  Before  he  could  transact  his  business 
he  was  arrested  and  taken  before  the  Mayor  on  the  charge 
of  "delivering  abolition  lectures  in  the  State  of  Massachu- 
setts." When  asked  to  plead  he  said  he  did  not  know 
whether  he  was  guilty  or  not.  He  recounted  his  early  life 
in  Raleigh,  and  recalled  the  story  of  his  struggles,  his  perse- 
cution, and  his  expulsion.  This  story,  he  said,  he  had  been 
telling  in  Massachusetts.  He  had  told  it  privately,  in 
churches,  or  wherever  he  could  get  a  hearing.  He  had 
asked  help  in  rescuing  his  family.  The  people  had  re- 
sponded to  his  appeals.  He  had  never  asked  a  contributor 
whether  he  was  an  Abolitionist  or  not ;  but  it  was  likely  that 
he  had  received  some  money  from  that  source.  He  closed 
by  reminding  them  that  he  would  not  come  back  until  the 
Governor  had  said  that  he  thought  it  would  not  be  a  viola- 
tion of  the  law.  The  Mayor  then  called  for  further  evi- 
dence. None  was  offered,  and  the  case  was  dismissed. 
This  course  by  the  Mayor  was  eminently  proper.  The  ac- 
tion which  Lane  had  no  doubt  committed  would  have  had 
the  effect  of  exciting  the  slaves  if  it  had  been  committed  in 
the  South ;  but  it  was  not  in  the  State,  and  accordingly  en- 
tirely without  the  jurisdiction  of  North  Carolina  courts ; 
besides,  the  evidence  against  him  was  absolutely  nothing. 
Nothing  but  the  blindest  feeling  could  have  brought  such 
a  charge. 


331]  Lunsford  Lane.  71 

After  the  trial,  Lunsford  was  about  to  leave  the  court- 
room, when  he  was  warned  that  he  would  be  killed  in  five 
minutes  if  he  went  into  the  crowd  that  was  collected  in  front 
of  the  door.  The  Mayor  tried  to  pacify  the  crowd,  but  was 
unsuccessful.  He  advised  Lane  to  leave  the  town  the  next 
day.  Lane  said  he  was  willing  to  go  at  once,  and  would 
trust  Mr.  Loring,  the  Mayor,  to  take  his  money,  settle  with 
Mr.  Smith  and  send  on  the  liberated  wife  and  children  to 
Philadelphia.  This  was  agreed  upon,  and  Lane  succeeded 
in  reaching  the  station  as  the  train  was  about  to  leave.  The 
crowd,  however,  followed  him,  surrounded  the  train  and 
declared  that  it  should  not  leave  with  the  object  of  their 
wrath  on  board.  The  Mayor  was  present  and  appealed  to 
the  mob,  but  in  vain.  They  demanded  that  the  negro's 
trunk  should  be  searched  for  abolition  literature.  While 
they  turned  their  attention  to  this  task,  Lane's  friends  were 
glad  to  hurry  him  off  to  the  safety  of  the  jail.  This  moment 
is  described  by  Lunsford  himself.  He  says:  "Looking 
from  my  prison  window  I  could  see  my  trunk  in  the  hands 
of  officers  Scott,  Johnston  and  others,  who  were  taking  it 
to  the  City  Hall  for  examination.  I  learned  afterwards  that 
they  broke  open  my  trunk,  and  as  the  lid  flew  up  the  mob 
cried  out,  'a  paper,  a  paper.'  A  number  seized  it  at  once, 
as  hungry  as  hounds  after  a  passing  fugitive  in  the  Southern 
swamps.  They  set  up  a  yell  of  wild  delight,  and  one  young 
man  of  profligate  character,  a  son  of  one  of  the  most  re- 
spectable families  in  the  place,  glanced  upward  toward  my 
prison  window  and  by  signs  and  words  expressed  his  grati- 
fication." The  sheet,  however,  proved  to  be  a  local  publi- 
cation and  entirely  inoffensive.  After  the  trunk  was  fully 
examined  the  carpet  bag  was  searched.  In  neither  could 
the  crowd  find  anything  that  was  criminating,  and  they  were 
temporarily  quieted. 

Lane  was  advised  to  stay  in  the  jail  until  night,  and  then 
go  to  the  home  of  Mr.  William  Boylan,  who  was  so  highly 
esteemed  in  the  community  that  his  house,  it  was  thought, 
would  be  a  safe  asylum.     To  this  he  assented.     Between 


72  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [332 

nine  and  ten  o'clock  at  night  he  left  the  jail ;  but  he  had  gone 
only  a  few  yards  when  he  was  seized  by  a  large  number  of 
people  and  rudely  drawn  away  to  an  "old  pine  field,"  where 
the  gallows  stood,  it  being  then  a  permanent  institution  in 
Raleigh.  He  thought  they  intended  to  hang  him.  At 
length  they  stopped.  They  began  to  question  him  about 
his  abolition  lectures.  Finally  a  bucket  and  a  feather  pil- 
low were  brought.  "A  flood  of  light  and  even  joy  sprang 
up  within  me,"  says  he.  It  was  to  be  tar  and  feathers.  A 
journeyman  printer  put  on  the  first  daub  of  tar.  When  the 
dressing  had  been  applied  in  regular  style,  he  was  given  his 
watch  and  his  clothes  and  allowed  to  go  his  way.  He  went 
to  his  home.  Some  of  his  persecutors  went  with  him. 
They  had  given  an  outlet  to  their  passions  in  the  great  rough 
joke  they  had  just  played,  and  now  they  were  in  a  good 
humor  again.  They  laughingly  watched  him  remove  the 
tar  and  feathers,  and  told  him  that  so  far  as  they  were  con- 
cerned, he  might  stay  in  town  as  long  as  he  chose. 

In  the  meantime  his  friends  had  become  alarmed,  and 
had  appealed  to  the  Governor  for  protection.  A  detail  of 
soldiers  was  accordingly  furnished,  which  guarded  him  at 
Mr.  Smith's  house  all  night.  Next  morning  he  settled  his 
business  matters  and  made  ready  to  start  with  his  family  for 
Philadelphia.  His  old  friends  now  showed  him  the  greatest 
kindness.  One  gave  him  food  enough  to  last  on  his  jour- 
ney, and  another  sent  a  carriage  to  take  him  and  his  family 
to  the  station.  He  went  to  say  farewell  to  his  former  mis- 
tress, Mrs.  Haywood,  who  was  then  very  old.  She  was 
much  grieved  at  what  had  happened,  and  ended  by  giving 
him  his  aged  mother  to  take  with  him.  She  added  that  he 
might  pay  her  $200  for  the  old  woman  if  he  ever  felt  him- 
self able,  and  if  not  the  loss  should  be  her  own.  A  great 
crowd  had  assembled  to  see  the  family  off.  Most  of  the 
mob  of  the  day  before  were  there,  and  appeared  to  be  hos- 
tile still.  Mr.  Boylan  had  arranged  with  the  conductor  of  the 
train  to  stop  on  the  edge  of  the  town  and  take  up  Lane,  who 
was  to  wait  there  while  his  wife  and  children  got  on  at  the 


333]  Lunsford  Lane.  73 

station.  The  mob,  not  finding  the  object  of  their  hatred, 
concluded  that  he  would  not  leave  on  that  day,  and  allowed 
the  train  to  go.  When  Lunsford  did  get  on  he  found  one  of 
them  a  passenger  on  the  train.  The  rioter  of  the  day  before 
was  very  angry  at  the  escape  of  his  victim,  and  ran  out  as 
the  train  stopped  at  the  stations,  trying  to  excite  the  by- 
standers to  go  in  and  drag  out  the  escaping  Abolitionist. 
These  attempts  were  unsuccessful,  and  in  due  time  the  fugi- 
tives arrived  in  Philadelphia. 

Of  Lunsford  Lane's  residence  in  the  North  but  little  need 
be  said  here.  After  a  short  stay  in  Philadelphia  he  went  to 
New  York,  and  from  there  he  went  to  the  annual  May  meet- 
ing of  the  Anti-Slavery  Society.  Later  he  settled  in  Bos- 
ton. For  some  time  he  was  engaged  as  a  lecturer  for  the 
anti-slavery  cause  in  New  England.  In  this  work  he  was 
said  to  have  been  very  successful.  On  account  of  the  severe 
climate  of  Boston,  where  he  had  lost  three  of  his  children, 
he  at  length  removed  to  Oberlin,  Ohio.  Here  another  child 
died,  and  he  lost  through  bad  investments  in  real  estate  most 
of  the  money  that  he  had  been  able  to  save.  On  the  occur- 
rence of  the  notable  Oberlin  Rescue  Case  he  returned  to 
Boston.  Early  in  life  he  had  learned  something  of  the 
medicinal  value  of  the  ordinary  herbs  in  the  fields  of  the 
South.  Relying  on  such  knowledge,  he  began  the  manu- 
facture of  a  medicine  which  he  called  ''Dr.  Lane's  Vegetable 
Pills."  In  the  sale  of  this  he  had  some  success.  Later  he 
removed  to  Worcester,  and  there  remained  for  some  time. 
He  continued  to  be  active  in  the  anti-slavery  cause  until 
the  war.  When  or  where  he  died  it  has  been  impossible 
to  learn. 

The  fact  that  he  rose  from  slavery  to  freedom,  and  to  some 
note  as  a  lecturer,  against  the  most  discouraging  opposition, 
is  evidence  that  Lunsford  Lane  was  a  remarkable  man.  He 
wras  a  true  son  of  toil.  He  was  patient,  and  when  he  was  re- 
viled, reviled  not  again.  His  biographer  has  given  too  little 
of  a  picture  of  his  character.  The  annals  of  his  native  State, 
even  when  he  was  thought  worthy  of  being  mobbed,  have 


74  Anti-Slavery  Leaders  of  North  Carolina.  [334 

dropped  his  name.  The  little  glimpse  that  we  have  of  his 
real  self  shows  what  a  promise  of  hope  he  was  for  the  race 
he  represented.  We  know  enough  to  be  certain  that  it  was 
a  most  short-sighted  policy  in  his  State  that  drove  him  and 
a  number  of  others  out  of  the  community,  and  made  impos- 
sible the  development  of  other  negroes  like  unto  him.  Since 
the  war  we  have  sadly  missed  such  strong  characters  in  our 
negro  population.  Twenty-five  years  before  the  war  there 
were  more  industrious,  ambitious  and  capable  negroes  in 
the  South  than  there  were  in  1865.  Had  the  severe  laws 
against  emancipation  and  free  negroes  not  been  passed,  the 
coming  of  freedom  would  have  found  the  colored  race  with 
a  number  of  superior  individuals  who  in  every  locality  would 
have  been  a  core  of  conservatism  for  the  benefit  of  both 
races.  Under  such  conditions  Lane  would  have  been  of 
great  beneficent  influence.  This  thought  was  impressed  on 
the  writer  in  a  striking  way  during  the  past  autumn.  He 
was  attending  a  fair  of  the  negro  race  in  a  North  Carolina 
city.  Going  the  rounds  of  the  exhibit  of  live-stock  his  at- 
tention was  attracted  by  a  placard  which  read:  "Horses 
Owned  and  Exhibited  by  Lunsford  Lane."  Approaching 
a  respectable-looking  negro  farmer,  he  said :  "Who  is 
Lunsford  Lane?"  "I  am,  sir,"  was  the  reply.  "What  kin 
are  you  to  the  original  Lunsford  Lane?"  "Don't  exactly 
know,  sir;  reckon  he  was  my  uncle."  "What  became  of 
him?"  said  the  writer,  thinking  to  draw  the  colored  man 
out.  "Think  he  must  'a'  emigrated,"  came  the  answer. 
Here  was  thrift  enough  to  become  the  owner  of  a  pair  of 
very  good  farm  horses,  but  not  enough  of  intelligence  to 
remember  the  fate  of  the  most  remarkable  member  of  the 
man's  family,  who  was  still  alive  thirty  years  ago.  How 
much  did  that  family  lose  in  the  emigration  of  Lunsford 
Lane! 

Note: — On  page  12  the  publisher  of  "The  Land  of  Gold"  is 
given  as  Mr.  Charles  Mortimer.  The  authority  for  the  statement  is 
Mr.  Helper  himself,  (See  Noonday  Exigencies — pp.  155-163).  A  copy 
of  "  The  Land  of  Gold,"  which  has  only  come  into  my  hands  at  the 
latest  possible  moment  before  going  to  press,  has  this  in  print:  "Bal- 
timore :  Published  for  the  Author,  by  Henry  Taylor,  Sun  Iron  Build- 
ing, 1855."  At  this  late  moment  I  am  unable  to  reconcile  these  two 
statements.  J.  S.  B. 


THE  JOHNS    HOPKINS    PRESS 

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IX 


THE     JOHNS     HOPKINS     PRESS 

OF     BALTIMORE. 


CONTEMPORARY   AMERICAN   OPINION    OF  THE 
FRENCH   REVOLUTION. 

BY 

CHARLES  DOWNER  HAZEN,  Ph.  D. 

Professor  of  History,  Smith  College. 
325  pp.  8vo,  cloth. — $2.00. 


This  essay  attempts  to  study  and  depict  the  opinions  of  Americans 
with  reference  to  a  revolution  which  they  followed  with  the  most  intense 
interest. 

CONTENTS. 


Part  I.    Opinion  of  Americans  Abroad. 

Thomas  Jefferson  in  France: — First  Impressions. — A  Journey 
through  France. — The  Passing  of  the  Notables. — The  Interlude. 
— The  States-General. 

Gouverneur  Morris  on  the  French  Revolution :  — Morris' 
Political  Creed. — France  in  the  Spring  of  1789. — The  Constitu- 
ent Assembly  ;  Its  Character  .—The  Constituent  Assembly  ;  Its 
Work. — The  Legislative  Assembly. — The  Convention. 

James  Monroe  on  the  French  Revolution. 

Part  II.    Opinion  of  Americans  at  Home. 

First  Movements  of  Public  Opinion. — An  Extraordinary  Year 
— J793- — Democratic  Societies. — Levelling  Principles. — The  Evi- 
dence of  Contemporary  Literature. — Sundry  Side- Lights. — The 
Growing  Opposition  and  its  Reasons. — Conclusion. 


NOW  READY: 

Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science. 

Volume  XVII  of  the  Series  of  "Extra  Volumes"  of  Studies. 


INDUSTRIAL  EXPERIMENTS  IN  THE  BRITISH 
COLONIES  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 

BY 

ELEANOR  LOUISA  LORD, 
164  pages.    Cloth. — $1.25 

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